1. Introduction


This post is currently up-to-date for patch 2.4.0.

This post is intended as a consolidated resource on rogue theorycraft with a heavy slant towards practical application in raiding. The overwhelming majority of the information contained herein relates to PvE, although I'm sure some of it may be useful in PvP. There is a rogue PvP thread located here: [Rogue] PVP Stat Standards/advice.

Please feel free to make suggestions for section changes/reorganization/content/whatever you want. Note that it's possible I've made errors in this post, or perhaps that the state of the rogue class changes over time. The remainder of this thread is available for the purpose of discussing such things. Please use it, that other rogue megathreads might be reduced in clutter somewhat.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Aldriana's 7 Commandments of Rogue DPS
3. Weapon Selection and Talent Builds
4. Regarding the Hit and Expertise Caps
5. Gear Selection
6. Gem Selection
7. Combo Point Cycles
8. Buffs and Enchants
9. Mechanics
10. Miscellaneous Links

Acknowledgements

The following individuals have contributed to the creation of this resource. Thanks for your help!


Aldriana
Aquasheep
Hanos
Nite_Moogle
Olgas
Oscarvil
Shaker
sp00n
Tryss
Vitaminc

Abbreviations

In order to reduce any confusion, here is a list of abbreviations commonly used either in this post or in general by rogues:

CP - combo point
IP - Instant Poison
DP - Deadly Poison
DPE - damage per energy
SnD - Slice and Dice
T4 2pc - 2-piece tier 4 (Netherblade) set bonus
1s/5r - represents the combo point cycle of 1 CP, Slice and Dice, 5 CP, Rupture
Xs/5e - represents the general class of cycles where you gain some number of CP (X), Slice and Dice, 5 CP, Eviscerate

2. Aldriana's 7 Commandments of Rogue DPS

The first step to success as a raiding rogue is to adhere to the 7 commandments of rogue DPS. Following these guidelines is by far the most important step to improving your DPS, and if you do not follow them, then nothing in the rest of this post will help you.

1. Don't die.
2. Don't do anything that risks wiping the raid.
3. Maximize your time on target.
4. Don't let your energy cap out.
5. Don't let SnD drop.
6. Use one of the spreadsheets to figure out your best cycle; this will usually be the highest rupture uptime cycle that doesn't violate rule 4 or 5.
7. Use your cooldowns.

3. Weapon Selection and Talent Builds

On main hand theory: in general, any considerations about weapon stats are subordinate to the fact of limited itemization. The selection of weapons provided supports a strategy of picking the highest DPS weapon of "slow" speed (1.7-1.9 for daggers, 2.6-2.8 for fists/maces/swords). Note: there are exceptions (e.g. [Talon of Azshara] > [Merciless Gladiator's Slicer]).

On offhand theory: for rogues with Combat Potency, a fast offhand is extremely important to increase the frequency of Combat Potency procs. For these builds, you can compare offhands by equating each 0.1 increment of speed to roughly 10 extra weapon DPS in favor of the faster weapon. For example, [Latro's Shifting Sword] is effectively 91.8 DPS when compared against [Fireguard]. Note that the stats on a weapon are still very important; for example, [Tracker's Blade] is superior to [Searing Sunblade] due to its stat allocation.

For non-Combat Potency rogues, offhand weapon speed is less important, but can still impact DPS via poison procs and sword spec procs. For any rogue with sword spec, each 0.1 increment of speed can be equated to roughly 5 extra weapon DPS in favor of the faster weapon. For rogues without sword spec, you can convert each 0.1 increment to 2 extra weapon DPS for the faster weapon. For combat Mutilate builds, offhand speed is nearly immaterial. This article points out that fast offhands suffer a very slight decrease in Mutilate damage relative to slow ones, most likely offsetting the increase in poison DPS.

On spec choice: in general, the maximum possible DPS can be achieved using swords. The current top personal DPS specs are combat swords and combat fist+sword. Combat mace+sword, combat fists, and combat daggers lag about 1-2% behind these builds in total DPS, with combat maces being about 3% back. Given the scarcity of weapons at most gear levels, it safe to "let your weapons choose your spec" -- that is, decide your spec based on whatever drops for you.

Hemo-based specs such as Hemo+swords (also called trispec Hemo) and Hemo+Deadliness have gained some popularity in recent months due to the damage debuff caused by the ability. Though most Hemo builds lag at least 5-6% behind combat builds in personal DPS, the raid DPS provided by the debuff often makes up a significant part of the deficit. Note that by or during tier 6 content, your personal DPS loss from being specced Hemo likely eclipses the raid DPS benefit of the debuff. With Hemo, you may again let your weapons choose your spec: sword-users should spec Hemo+swords, while those with other weapons should choose Hemo+Deadliness. Hemo specs involving Shadowstep, Cheat Death, Seal Fate, or Combat Potency are provably inferior to the two aforementioned specs, and should be avoided.

Note that we do not currently have a mathematical model for Mutilate DPS as accurate as those for other specs. Empirical evidence suggests that Mutilate DPS is inferior to combat swords, but still reasonably competitive, possibly on par with Hemo-based specs.

On talents: for PvE builds, the two most important talents in any tree are Relentless Strikes and Dual Wield Specialization (which therefore mandates Precision). For any combat build, mandatory talents are Improved Slice and Dice, Blade Flurry, Weapon Expertise, Aggression, Adrenaline Rush, Combat Potency, and Surprise Attacks, as well as an appropriate weapon specialization. Combat dagger specs additionally require Puncturing Wounds and Opportunity, while Sinister Strike builds require Improved Sinister Strike.

Hemo builds have a large number of optional talents, with mandatory talents being Serrated Blades and Hemorrhage. For Hemo+sword builds, note that one point of Sword Specialization and one point of Weapon Expertise are each superior to one point of Dirty Deeds for sustained DPS. For Hemo+Deadliness builds, Blade Flurry is superior to the fifth point in Deadliness.

Combat Mutilate builds also have a number of optional talents, with Puncturing Wounds, Cold Blood, Seal Fate, Vigor, Find Weakness, and Mutilate being required. Nearly all PvE-focused builds should carry the same initial point spread in Assassination: Malice, Ruthlessness, Murder, and Relentless Strikes. If there are still available points, spend them in Lethality, then Vile Poisons.

Sample builds:

Here are sample builds for each typical rogue raid spec. Keep in mind when looking at these which talents are required and which ones are up to taste.

Combat swords (or any Sinister Strike-based weapon spec) - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Combat fist+sword (or any dual weapon spec) - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Combat daggers - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Hemo+swords - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Hemo+Deadliness - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Combat Mutilate - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (HELP! Need a new Mutilate template for 2.4)

4. Regarding the Hit and Expertise Caps

In the context of stats, the term "cap" refers to the point at which equipping more of a particular stat will have no additional value. For hit rating and expertise rating in particular, the cap usually discussed is for the effect of these stats on raid bosses. For example, once you reach or surpass the hit cap, you will never miss an attack against a raid boss unless you are under the effect of some debuff that reduces your hit chance (for example, Attumen the Huntsman's curse). There is no "minimum" chance to miss melee attacks, nor to be dodged or parried.

Your base chance to miss a raid boss while dual wielding is 28% with auto-attack on both hands. Your base chance to miss a special attack is 9%. For each 15.77 hit rating you equip, you reduce your chance to miss by 1%. Thus we can calculate hit caps for auto-attack and special attacks:

Auto-attack, 0/5 Precision: 442
Auto-attack, 5/5 Precision: 363
Special, 0/5 Precision: 142
Special, 5/5 Precision: 64

Your base chance to be dodged by a raid boss with any attack is thought to be 6.5%. For each 3.94 expertise rating you equip, you gain 1 expertise, reducing your chance to be dodged by 0.25% (thus it takes exactly 15.77 expertise rating to reduce your chance to be dodged by 1%). Thus, we can calculate expertise caps for various combinations of talents and racial abilities:

0/2 Weapon Expertise, non-Human: 103
1/2 Weapon Expertise, non-Human: 83
2/2 Weapon Expertise, non-Human: 64
0/2 Weapon Expertise, Human (wielding swords or maces): 83
1/2 Weapon Expertise, Human: 64
2/2 Weapon Expertise, Human: 44

The hit and expertise caps are NOT magic numbers that every rogue [or any rogue] must reach. Whether you're in T4 or T6, there are NO MAGIC NUMBERS for how much hit or expertise rating you "should" have. There is no special benefit to being capped with either stat, nor is there any special benefit to reaching an arbitrary threshold. The purpose of listing the caps here is so that you do not accidentally overshoot either cap by equipping too much hit rating or expertise rating. Always remember that any hit rating or expertise rating beyond the cap will have zero positive effect on your DPS.

5. Gear Selection

In this section, rather than listing comparisons between every piece of gear a rogue could conceivably obtain, I will describe a general-purpose system for comparing pieces of gear against one another. To compare two pieces, you can give each stat a "weight" proportional to its DPS contribution relative to other stats. Let's call this weight Equivalence Points (EP). We'll define 1 AP = 1 EP; that is, 1 attack power is worth exactly 1 Equivalence Point. Now we can use a spreadsheet to determine how much DPS a single point of any stat provides relative to a single point of attack power, and convert those directly into EP values.

To utilize the EP weights, simply take a piece of gear and multiply each stat bonus on that piece by the EP weight for that stat. In case of gem sockets, figure out how you would gem the piece in actual use (instructions for gemming are given in the following section), and multiply the stats provided by each gem by their respective EP weights. Any stat provided that does not have direct DPS value (e.g. stamina, dodge rating, resilience) can be valued at 0 EP. Examples of using the EP weights are provided below.

Note that all EP weights assume the following set of buffs: Leader of the Pack, 5/5 Mark of the Wild, Faerie Fire, Mangle, 5/5 Hunter's Mark, 0/5 Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, 2/2 Power Word: Fortitude, Bloodlust, 2/2 Strength of Earth Totem, 2/2 Windfury Totem, Unleashed Rage, Curse of Recklessness, Sunder Armor, 5/5 Battle Shout, Flask of Relentless Assault, Spicy Hot Talbuk. If you raid with more or fewer buffs, consult a spreadsheet to obtain more accurate EP weights.

Tier 4: the following is a table of EP values for sword (16/41+4), dagger (15/41/5), Hemo+sword (11/28/22), and Hemo+Deadliness (11/21/29) builds, assuming a projected tier 4 level of gear (heroics, Karazhan, Gruul, Magtheridon, pre-2.3 badge rewards).

Tier 5: the following is a table of EP values for the same builds, assuming a projected tier 5 level of gear (Zul'Aman through first two timed chests, Serpentshrine Cavern, Tempest Keep, 2.3 badge rewards):

Tier 6: the following is a table of EP values for the same builds, assuming a projected tier 6 level of gear (Zul'Aman third timed chest, Hyjal Summit, Black Temple).

Example comparison: here's an example of using the T5 EP weights for a combat swords build to compare [Shoulderpads of the Stranger] to [Shoulderpads of Dancing Blades]:

Shoulderpads of the Stranger
303 Armor ---> 0 EP
+33 Agility ---> 33 * 2.15 = 70.95 EP
+28 Stamina ---> 0 EP
[ ] Red: +4 Agi / +4 Hit ---> 4 * 2.15 + 4 * 2.32 = 17.88 EP
Socket Bonus: +2 Agility ---> 2 * 2.15 = 4.30 EP
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 16. ---> 16 * 1.67 = 26.72 EP
Equip: Increases your expertise rating by 10. ---> 10 * 2.74 = 27.40 EP
Equip: Increases attack power by 60. ---> 60 EP
Total: 70.95 + 17.88 + 4.30 + 26.72 + 27.40 + 60 = 207.25 EP

Shoulderpads of Dancing Blades
303 Armor ---> 0 EP
+33 Agility ---> 33 * 2.15 = 70.95 EP
+39 Stamina ---> 0 EP
Equip: Improves hit rating by 16. ---> 16 * 2.32 = 37.12 EP
Equip: Increases attack power by 68. ---> 68 EP
Total: 70.95 + 37.12 + 68 = 176.07 EP

These two items make a good comparison for two reasons. First, with a difference as large as 30 EP, you can reasonably confident that the [Shoulderpads of the Stranger] are better for just about any combat sword rogue than the [Shoulderpads of Dancing Blades]. However, they also illustrate one potential flaw -- expertise rating comes in increments of 1, but expertise itself only increases in increments of 0.25% (~3.94 expertise rating). For example, if you have 0 expertise rating, [Shoulderpads of the Stranger] by themselves will only increase your expertise to 2, and [Grips of Deftness] by themselves will only increase your expertise to 3. However, equipping both items together will increase your expertise to 6. Keep this effect in mind when using EP weights for expertise.

On stat weight scaling: each stat's EP value will tend to scale with your gear, talents, and raid buffs. Sinister Calling will increase the EP value of agility by about 15%, while Blessing of Kings will increase the EP values of agility and strength by 10%. Deadliness will increase the DPS contribution of strength, agility, and attack power, which will have the effect of reducing the EP values of any other stats. On-hit procs such as Windfury, Mongoose, Combat Potency, and [Dragonspine Trophy] will all increase the values of hit and expertise ratings, while [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] and Mace Specialization will both increase the value of crit rating. All of the EP weights given above are examples based on a theoretical raid composition and gear/talent setup; for the most exact valuation of stats, you should always consult a spreadsheet.

On trinkets: [Dragonspine Trophy] is the best trinket in the game for combat rogues, currently. [Shard of Contempt] is a very close second, as long as you can make use of the expertise. Humans wielding swords or maces can only make use of the Shard if they have no other items with expertise rating. Other races (or humans with other weapon types) can make use of it providing they have at most one of the following items: [Belt of One-Hundred Deaths], [Dragonscale-Encrusted Longblade], [Slayer's Boots], or any other item with more than 20 expertise rating. The Blackened Naaru Sliver trinket has not yet been seen in-game, therefore we have no idea how it compares to these.

[Warp-Spring Coil] is the next best option, though it does not reach this level of relative power until T6 and Sunwell gear levels. [Ashtongue Talisman of Lethality] and [Madness of the Betrayer] are next, then [Berserker's Call] and [Tsunami Talisman]. [Bloodlust Brooch], [Darkmoon Card: Crusade], [Abacus of Violent Odds], [Hourglass of the Unraveller], and [Icon of Unyielding Courage] are all good pre-raiding options. [Romulo's Poison Vial] is decent if you have plenty of room under the hit cap. As with main hand weapons, because of scarcity it's often safe to choose trinkets on a policy of "whatever drops first."

6. Gem Selection

On meta gems: you want a headpiece with a meta gem socket. Use [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] in that socket. [Thundering Skyfire Diamond] is inferior due to a ~40 second cooldown, 6 second duration, and low proc rate, but it is the second-best option for the socket. [Swift Skyfire Diamond] is nowhere near as good as either of these, and should be avoided.

On combat gem selection: only gem for socket bonuses that provide offensive stats (hit/crit rating, agility, AP), and only if they are achievable using solely red and yellow gems. If you are socketing for a bonus, always use [Rigid Dawnstone] in yellow sockets and [Glinting Noble Topaz] in red sockets, unless you are nearing the hit cap, in which case use [Glinting Noble Topaz] in yellow sockets and [Delicate Living Ruby] in red sockets.

Pay attention to your meta gem socket requirement of 2 blue gems. Only use [Shifting Nightseye] to fulfill the requirement, and only as many as necessary. If you are not socketing for a bonus, always use [Rigid Dawnstone] or [Glinting Noble Topaz], switching to [Delicate Living Ruby] if you reach the hit cap.

On Hemo gem selection: for Hemo+sword builds, gem very much the same as you would for combat. For Hemo+Deadliness, prefer [Delicate Living Ruby] for red sockets (or for all sockets, if not gemming for a bonus) and [Glinting Noble Topaz] for yellow sockets. [Shifting Nightseye] should still be the gem of choice for satisfying the 2 blue gem requirement of RED or TSD. Only if you know for certain you will never be getting Blessing of Kings, [Bright Living Ruby] and [Balanced Nightseye] are appropriate gems for a Hemo+Deadliness build.

On Mutilate gem selection: Mutilate builds should prefer [Delicate Living Ruby] for red sockets (or for all sockets, if not gemming for a bonus) and [Glinting Noble Topaz] for yellow sockets. Use [Shifting Nightseye] to satisfy meta gem requirements.

On unique gems: several BoP gems are available from heroics, jewelcrafting, and PvP which may be used in place of any of the gems mentioned above. The following gems may be obtained and used in any socket where a rare ("blue" quality) gem of the same color would normally be placed. Note that the PvP and jewelcrafting gems listed below are also unique-equip, meaning you may only wear one in any given set of gear.

• [Bold Ornate Ruby] (red) - PvP honor reward
• [Crimson Sun] (red) - Jewelcrafting BoP
• [Stone of Blades] (yellow) - Jewelcrafting BoP
• [Brutal Tanzanite] (purple) - Heroic Botanica
• [Pulsing Amethyst] (purple) - Nightbane quest
• [Shifting Tanzanite] (purple) - Heroic Steamvault
• [Glinting Fire Opal] (orange) - Heroic Black Morass
• [Pristine Fire Opal] (orange) - Heroic Sethekk Halls

On epic gemming: follow the same gemming rules as above, substituting the epic versions ([Delicate Crimson Spinel], [Glinting Pyrestone], [Rigid Lionseye], [Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst]) where appropriate. Note that [Crimson Spinel] are still in high demand from just about every caster class, therefore if you would like to use them, you should consider using your [Badge of Justice] stock. Note that epic gems are only available for purchase via badges once the Isle of Quel'danas has been fully opened on your realm.

On incorrect gemming: regardless of spec, the following gems are strictly inferior to available alternatives and should not be used by any rogue: [Bold Living Ruby], [Wicked Noble Topaz], [Smooth Dawnstone], [Jagged Talasite].

7. Combo Point Cycles

"Combo point cycle" refers to the algorithm used by a rogue to determine what finishers to use, and in what order, during sustained combat (e.g. against a raid boss). A combo point cycle revolves around keeping Slice and Dice active as close to 100% of the time as possible while also keeping Rupture active as much as possible. Eviscerate should only be used if the target is close to death, if the target is bleed-immune, or if you already have Slice and Dice and Rupture up with plenty of time left. See the Mechanics section for more about Eviscerate.

Combo point cycles are usually expressed in the format "1s/5r" or "3s/5s/5e" (for example). Each number-letter pair indicates a finisher to be used at a certain number of CP. An 's' represents Slice and Dice, an 'r' represents Rupture, and an 'e' represents Eviscerate. Thus, 1s/5r represents a cycle where you gain 1 CP, use Slice and Dice, gain 5 CP, use Rupture, and then repeat; and 3s/5s/5e represents a cycle where you gain 3 CP, use Slice and Dice, gain 5 CP, use Slice and Dice again, gain 5 CP, use Eviscerate, and then repeat. For maximum performance, do not deviate from the cycle unless you are forced to stop attacking the target.

On combat cycles: combat builds using swords, fists, maces, or any combination thereof will generally use a 4s/5r cycle, unless the rogue has T4 2pc, in which case he should use 1s/5r. If the target is immune to bleed effects, use 5s/5e (or 2s/5e, if you have T4 2pc). Combat dagger builds should use a 3s/5s/5r cycle, unless the rogue has T4 2pc, in which case he should use 1s/3r. If the target is immune to bleed effects, use 3s/5s/5e (or 1s/3e, if you have T4 2pc).

On Hemo cycles: Hemo builds should use a 5s/5r cycle, unless the rogue has T4 2pc, in which case he should use 2s/5r. Substitute Eviscerate in place of Rupture if the target is immune to bleed effects.

On Mutilate cycles: Mutilate doesn't use a fixed cycle because its CP generation can vary widely. Rather, a Mutilate build uses a general policy of "3+" or "4+", performing finishers after a certain minimum number of CP (either 3 or 4) have been accumulated. Finishers used are SnD, Rupture, and Eviscerate/Envenom, in order of priority (note: see the Mechanics section regarding Envenom). Be sure to balance finisher usage to get the most value out of Find Weakness procs.

On movement and on-the-fly cycles: in many fights, rogues will be required to run in and out of melee range with the boss, or will be prevented at times from entering melee range to continue their cycle. Depending on the length of time you'll be out of melee range, there are many ways to handle these situations. If the interruption will only be brief (less than 10 seconds between leaving melee range and reentering it), your energy bar should be able to absorb the delay and you can continue your cycle when you get back into melee range as if nothing had happened. Otherwise, you should either burn your CP immediately on a Rupture (or Eviscerate, in the case of a bleed-immune target) or save them for a Slice and Dice when you next enter melee. In some fights, it is impossible to predict how often you will be interrupted or for how long. In these situations, your best bet is to get Slice and Dice up immediately upon starting melee and keep it up at all costs, only Rupturing if you have extra combo points to burn.

8. Buffs and Enchants

On raid buffs: the standard raid group for a rogue is typically feral druid + DPS warrior + enhance shaman + rogue + rogue (or something similar). The biggest party-based DPS buffs for a combat build are Battle Shout (5/5 improved), Unleashed Rage, Grace of Air/Windfury (see further below), Leader of the Pack, in that order. If your raid is short on paladins, Salvation > Might > Kings. If your raid doesn't have an enhancement shaman, a resto shaman in the group dropping totems is the next best thing (Unleashed Rage is a big loss, but Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem provide nearly their full benefit even if the shaman doesn't have the talents for them).

On self-buffs: [Flask of Relentless Assault] is the best DPS option for your elixir slots; however, [Elixir of Major Agility] is very close behind. In general, choose the flask for progression and the elixir for farm content. Your best food option is [Spicy Hot Talbuk] if you're combat or Hemo+swords, [Warp Burger] otherwise. [Haste Potion] are extremely powerful if used on cooldown, but save your potion timer if you know you'll be taking a lot of damage. If you're a leatherworker, [Drums of Battle] > [Drums of War].

On poisons and Windfury: for PvE, always choose DP on the offhand. If you are in a group with a shaman and you're combat, you'll get more DPS from Windfury as opposed to Grace of Air + IP. However, the difference is not as dramatic as it is for, say, a DPS warrior. If your group contains a DPS warrior, Windfury Totem will usually be dropped. Otherwise, if less than half the group is rogues, Grace of Air Totem will probably be dropped and you should use IP on the MH. Always check with your shaman if you're unsure what will be dropped. For Mutilate, Grace of Air Totem might be preferable, but Windfury Totem is still quite powerful. Note that dual DP is a waste for all builds except Mutilate, and only if you use Envenom. For all builds, [Adamantite Sharpening Stone] are inferior unless the target is immune to poisons.

On weapon enchants: Mongoose is currently considered the only viable weapon enchant for rogues. 20 agility is inferior, even on the offhand. Executioner was once thought to out-scale Mongoose as a main hand enchant towards the end of T6 content, when the rogue obtained a decent amount of passive armor penetration. However, this observation was based on a bugged model. The circumstances under which Executioner does out-scale Mongoose are now thought to be so restrictive as to rule out use of the enchant for PvE purposes.

On other enchants: [Greater Inscription of Vengeance] (Aldor) is very slightly better than [Greater Inscription of the Blade] (Scryer). 15 agility to gloves is superior to 26 attack power. If you aren't using [Swift Skyfire Diamond] in your helmet, then a solid case can be made for getting Cat's Swiftness to boots instead of Dexterity (you lose 6 agility, but gain 8% run speed -- see this post by Aldriana for a more detailed look at boot enchants). If you are an enchanter, Stats should be your ring enchant of choice, unless you are daggers, in which case Striking will come out very slightly ahead. Always make sure you have [Glyph of Ferocity] on your helm, 12 agility on your cloak, 6 stats on your chest, 24 attack power on your bracers, and [Nethercobra Leg Armor] (or [Cobrahide Leg Armor] if you're poor) on your legs.

9. Mechanics

On haste: haste effects provide extra attacks per time unit equal to their magnitude; so Slice and Dice provides 30% extra attacks over its duration compared to without it. Percentage-based haste effects are multiplicative; however, rating-based haste effects (e.g. [Dragonspine Trophy]) are all added together into a total haste rating before being converted (at a rate of 15.77 rating to 1%) into a single percentage-based haste. Thus, separate percentage-based hastes increase one another's effects, while separate rating-based hastes do not do the same. As a result, coordinating rating-based hastes (e.g. trying to time a Haste Potion and Abacus of Violent Odds simultaneously with a Dragonspine Trophy proc and Dragonstrike proc) will not have any special effects. However, coordinating percentage-based hastes (e.g. hitting Blade Flurry together with Bloodlust) will increase your benefits.

On cooldown usage: because of the way different stats scale with one another, it is generally preferable to use DPS-increasing cooldowns simultaneously rather than one at a time. This post and this post demonstrate the increased effect possible by simultaneously triggering cooldowns, especially haste-based effects. In general, you should use cooldowns as they become available. However, in some cases of cooldowns with staggered timers (e.g. Blade Flurry and Troll Berserking), it may be best, when the longer cooldown becomes available, to delay it slightly until the shorter one also becomes available. See this post for more detail.

On Eviscerate: at nearly all reachable levels of gear, Rupture will be superior to Eviscerate on any target that isn't immune to bleeds. At 5 CP, Rupture deals 1000 damage plus 24% of your AP for 25 energy, or 40 damage plus 0.96% of your AP per energy. At 5 CP and with T5 2pc, Eviscerate deals 1245 damage plus 15% of your AP for 35 energy, or roughly 35.57 damage plus 0.43% of your AP per energy. Applying 3/3 Improved Eviscerate and 3/3 Aggression (121% modifier), 40% crit and RED (142.4% modifier), and 30% armor reduction (assuming a typical debuffed raid boss), Eviscerate comes to 42.90 damage plus 0.52% of your AP per energy. Thus, Eviscerate holds an advantage of 2.90 base damage per energy, but Rupture gains an additional 0.44% of your AP. At this rate, it takes only 656 AP for Rupture to overcome Eviscerate's base advantage. Simply, in any situation where you can Rupture, you should Rupture.

On Shiv: Shiv cannot be dodged or parried, and like other offhand attacks, it can proc Combat Potency. Even so, its damage per energy will be inferior to Sinister Strike or Backstab almost regardless of stats, largely due to the offhand damage penalty and the lack of any static damage boost built into the ability. This post and this addendum contain some sample calculations of Shiv DPE. Shiv spam with DP offhand and Envenom is inferior to Rupture-based cycles in most raid/group situations (see this post).

On Envenom: Envenom damage is not mitigated by armor, and can be boosted by Stormstrike, Misery (shadow priest debuff), and Vile Poisons. However, in all but the most favorable circumstances (for example, extremely high crit, T5 2pc, RED, 5/5 Vile, Stormstrike and Misery both up), Envenom's DPE will be inferior to Rupture. The more apt comparison to make is Envenom versus Eviscerate. At 5 CP and untalented (talents can boost both abilities by roughly the same: Envenom by 20%, Eviscerate by 21%), Envenom 2 deals 900 base damage plus 15% of AP, while Eviscerate deals 1045 damage plus 15% of AP. However, Eviscerate damage is mitigated by armor, which is typically roughly 30% damage reduction by a raid boss. Thus, Envenom is, at base, slightly better straight-up DPE than Eviscerate. However, Envenom results in the loss of your entire DP stack, resulting in a drop of roughly 45 DPS (before Vile Poisons) for as long as it takes to get the full stack up again. A Mutilate build running dual DP can get enough DPS out of Envenom and DP to make it worthwhile to use. However, for other builds, if you must choose between Eviscerate and Envenom, choose Eviscerate.

10. Miscellaneous Links

Rogue Gear Spreadsheet

These abilities stack. Racial bonus + 2/2 weapon expertise = 365 weapon skill.

Weapon speed on mutilate does "matter" but the degree to which it matters is not very large - Kalman had a post back in pf's old thread (I believe) which showed that if you have a reasonable upgrade DPSwise from an offhand dagger, the speed was not a SIGNIFICANT factor to its performance. However, given equal statted/dps daggers, the slower offhand will do (slightly) more damage.

General BT gem rarity from what I can tell from other posts is that the red gems (Crimson Spinel) are in very high demand, so +10 agi gems for rogues aren't a high priority. Given that Rigid Lionseye and Glinting Pyrestones are damn near the same level of DPS and in less demand from other classes, these are excellent choices for the T6 rogue to pursue. Things may change with the Sunwell, depending on changing number/type of sockets on the gear there, and of course, what sort of stats the gear there has.


(edit: not so good at gem names)

Not sure how it is for other guilds, but Crimson Spinels are in huge demand from our casters; if I ever wanted to gem 10agi or 20ap for whatever reason, I would have a lot of competition. We seem to have plenty of Lionseyes and Pyrestones though, so 10hit, 10crit, or 5agi/5hit is no problem. 10hit does require your JCs to be Revered with Hyjal, so any gear early on in the instance will have to make do with something else.

Here's some stuff about mutilate offhand from Vitaminc.

Rogue Theorycrap: Mutilate, Part 4: Myth on Off-hand Weapon Choices

The gist is that slow offhand does matter but not so much due to the +101 offhand modifier mutilate gets.

This is about as much as I'm going to get in here tonight, there's a hockey game to watch and then a raid to run. Please post any suggestions/additions/corrections/whatever and I'll take care of them after raid or tomorrow.

it would be nice to see some math on the actual value of haste, as i'm still (yes even after plugging it into the spreadsheets) questioning my band of devastation and shadow walkers cord over other parts sporting more raw stats.

How about this for a combat mutilate (41/20/0) build?

There are a few filler points in the middle of the assassination tree. You can forgo either of Fleet Footed or Quick Recovery to put points into Improved Poisons, Imp. Kidney Shot or Master Poisoner but these are really minimal changes based on the flavour of your playstyle.

Fleet Footed is a decent dps increase (even more so in 2.3 where it's a 15% speed increase) whenever you're running a lot in an encounter and Quick Recovery is a small dps increase with the bonus of your bandages ticking for just that little bit more which is why I prefer them.

In the combat tree the main talents are Imp. Slice and Dice, Precision and Dual Wield Spec. with the others being fillers. I chose Imp. SS and Gouge because a lot of the time you can't be behind the mob and this enables to build CP more cheaply for a KS to regain position or gives you a little more time to regen energy after a Gouge when regaining position. These are probably as useful in a raid situation as Lightning Reflexes so it's pretty much your choice what to take.

Other builds such as 41/15/5 to get Opportunity or 41/0/20 for Serrated Blades are not recommended for PvE DPS due to the fact that Opportunity nor Serrated Blades can give the DPS increase that Imp. SnD, Precision or Dual Wield Spec give.

There should be something said in the Mutilate section about cycles. It is more complicated running Mut cycles because of the ever-changing number of CP that you generate, coupled with the fact that you want to maximise the benefit of your 10 seconds of Expose Weakness after every finisher. When I played Mut I ran a 4+ cycle, meaning every time I got 4 or more CP I threw a finisher. For the most part the finishers are SnD and Rupture but sometimes you end up with 4 CP and a long time left on your Rupture. In this situation you can either wait for the Rupture to tick off (letting your energy to regen, but not over 100) before refreshing it, otherwise an Eviscerate can be used to spend the CP.

Windfury, poisons and Mutulate: I'm not sure what the optimal setup for a Mut rogue is nowadays. Before the WF nerf it was no question what you used on your mainhand but I have read some people talking about running with dual Deadly Poison and using Envenom over eviscerate/rupture. Someone else should elucidate the intricacies of this problem as I haven't played Mut for a while.

If this is all total crap please educate me (-:

Gear and gem sections added. They seem a bit light to me, maybe because there's not a lot to discuss, but let me know if there's anything missing. The AP equivalency numbers were pulled from Aldriana's spreadsheet using the best gear I could put together only from tier 4 level. The numbers given for my current gear seem to be fairly close to these, so I assume they're fairly good, but please yell at me if you disagree.

It looks like you made some mistakes in the talent spec templates:

The combat swords, combat fist and combat mace specs have 42 points in combat while it is possible to take out 1 filler point (Nerves of Steel/Endurance) and max Lethality instead (4/5 in your templates).
For the fist+sword template you forgot to max Combat Potency (take points out of Lightning Reflexes, Endurance).

For combat swords i prefer something more along Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft especially because you dont need the evasion cooldown and 10% stun and fear resist is definitly more dps. One could argue now about 2/2 nerves of steel and 3/5 vile poisons or 1/2 nerves of steel and 4/5 vile poisons.

I consider both of your comments (except forgetting to max CP in the fist+sword template) to be more of "taste"-based things (and I'll freely admit I made those templates based on my taste, which certainly doesn't agree with everybody's). How about if I rewrite the talent section a bit to identify the key talents and which ones are optional?

I agree there isn't any clearly superior choice for those last points, I just assumed it was a mistake because you had 5/5 Lethality in the fist+sword build but not in the other builds
Identifying key talents would probably be the way to go. They are supposed to be templates after all and not exact guides for where to put each point.

Your gem info is pretty good an concise right now. [Shifting Tanzanite] is a red/blue gem.

Some theorycrafting stuff you might or might not want to add:


Haste formula

Haste is multiplicative from talents (SnD, Blade Flurry, & Mongoose), and additive from haste rating.
That means, all haste ratings are first added together, and then multiplicated with the remaining haste factors.
Hasted Speed = Weapon Speed / ( (1+(Haste 1 %/100)) * (1+Haste 2 %/100)) * (1+(((Haste Rating 1 + Haste Rating 2 + ... )/100)/15.77)))

Examples: 2.6 weapon speed

• SnD:
  2.6 / ( 1+(30/100) )
  = 2.0 hasted speed
  ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
• SnD + Blade Flurry:
  2.6 / ( (1+(30/100)) * (1+(20/100)) )
  = 1.667 hasted speed
  ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
• SnD + Blade Flurry + 2x Mongoose + Abacus of Violent Odds + Haste Potion:
  2.6 / ( (1+(30/100)) * (1+(20/100)) * (1+(2/100)) * (1+(2/100)) * (1+(((260 + 400)/100)/15.77)) )
  = 1.129 hasted speed
  ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

There is no cap on how fast you can haste your weapon.




Damage calculation for special attacks

Backstab

• without talents:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) * 1.5 + 255 )
• with Opportunity:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) * 1.5 + 255 ) * 1.2
• without Opportunity but with Surprise Attacks:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) * 1.5 + 255 ) * (1 + 0.1)
• with Opportunity & Surprise Attacks:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) * 1.5 + 255 ) * (1.2 + 0.1)

Sinister Strike

• without talents:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*2.4)) + 98 )
• with Aggression:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*2.4)) + 98 ) * 1.06
• without Aggression but with Surprise Attacks:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*2.4)) + 98 ) * (1 + 0.1)
• with Aggression & Surprise Attacks:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*2.4)) + 98 ) * (1.06 + 0.1)

Mutilate

• without talents:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) + 101 ) * POISONED [* 1.5]
• with Opportunity:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) + 101 ) * 1.2 * POISONED [* 1.5]

Offhand [Mutilate]
>> Is the behaviour first mentioned by Kalman here still in place? <<
If yes, then:

• without talents:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) * 0.5 + 101 ) * POISONED [* 1.5]
• with Opportunity:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) * 0.5 + 101 ) * 1.2 * POISONED [* 1.5]
• with Dual Wield:
  ( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) * 0.5 + 101 ) * 1.5 * POISONED [* 1.5]

Making Dual Wield spec only slightly less effective than Opportunity in terms of total Mutilate damage.
But Dual Wield spec also increases your white DPS, thus overall it wins against Opportunity.


Hemorrhage
Hemorrhage is still not normalized, so a slower weapon means higher damage.
( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*WEAPONSPEED) ) + 10)


Eviscerate

• 1 CP: 245 to 365 + (AP * 0.03)
• 2 CP: 430 to 550 + (AP * 0.06)
• 3 CP: 615 to 735 + (AP * 0.09)
• 4 CP: 800 to 920 + (AP * 0.12)
• 5 CP: 985 to 1105 + (AP * 0.15)

Rupture

• 1 CP: 8 sec/4 ticks - Total damage: ( 324 + 4*0.01 * AP)
• 2 CP: 10 sec/5 ticks - Total damage: ( 460 + 5*0.02 * AP)
• 3 CP: 12 sec/6 ticks - Total damage: ( 618 + 6*0.03 * AP)
• 4 CP: 14 sec/7 ticks - Total damage: ( 798 + 7*0.03 * AP)
• 5 CP: 16 sec/8 ticks - Total damage: (1000 + 8*0.03 * AP)

Serrated Blades is 130% and Mangle another 130%.




Damage reduction through armor

All physical attacks suffer from damage reduction through armor.

This is the simplified formula do calculate damage reduction:

• vs. level 70: (Armor / (Armor + 10557.5)) * 100
• vs. level 73: (Armor / (Armor + 11960)) * 100

Most boss mobs in TBC seem to have either 6200 or 7700 armor, setting them to 34.14% resp. 39.17% damage reduction (before Sunder Armor, etc).

To calculate damage reduction against any other target's level:

• Enemies 01-59: Damage Reduction % = ( Armor / ( Armor + 400 + 85 * Target Level) ) * 100
• Enemies 60-73: Damage Reduction % = ( Armor / ( Armor + 400 + 85 * (Target Level + 4.5 * (Target Level-59)) ) ) * 100

Maybe a few words about poisons and shaman totems would be useful ?

I have noticed that a great many Rogues skip Master Poisoner in their Mutilate builds. Does anyone know why? I noticed in WWS logs that Rogues at the hit cap were seeing poison resists, so I assume it's governed by Nature Resistance. Are these resists level-inherent resistances that can't be ignored or would Master Poisoner take them off the table?

Change to "offhand speed".

Also, the gemming recommendations should be noted to be aimed at COMBAT rogues, as +hit will lose a ton of value from not having either DW Spec or Combat Potency. I'm not 100% sure what those rogues should gem for (well, I know Agility is good, but not sure if 1 crit rating will be better or worse than 1 hit rating).

Vulajin, you stated in the 'gear selection' section that besides haste, for which there is no real itemization, increasing hit rating is the best option for increasing DPS. Then in the 'regarding the hit cap' area you say, "Hit is an extremely valuable stat for rogues, but single-mindedly increasing hit at the expense of other stats will hurt your DPS output". I'm wondering how this can be possible if the first item is true. I was hoping you could elaborate on this, as I'm currently having issues with the spreadsheet.

An example I use to illustrate this is: let's say you are far below the hit cap and are trying to choose between two upgrades to your gear. If one upgrade gives you +1 AP and the other gives you +1 hit rating, you should choose +1 to hit, since it is clearly the better option.

If on the other hand, one upgrade gives you +100 AP and the other gives you +1 hit rating, you would be foolish to choose the +1 hit; regardless of how far below the cap you are, 100 AP is still a better upgrade.



It's an extreme case, but many people seem to think that the hit cap is the only thing that maximizes their DPS, and make the wrong choices in these kinds of tradeoffs without realizing it.

Hm, those two statements do sound contradictory. What I'm getting at is that if you have two pieces of gear and one just happens to have more hit on it, doesn't make the piece with more hit better. In other words, even if you're not hit-capped, you should always consider the overall stats on an item, and not just the hit rating. Just by way of a simple example, I would expect most rogues would prefer Warp-Spring Coil over Romulo's Poison Vial, even if they're not hit-capped.

Re: everyone else who posted anything overnight or this afternoon, I'll be getting around to it all shortly.

All this means is that although 1 hit rating is more valuable than 1 Agility, given the choice between 5 hit rating and 10 agility, take the agility.

Several sections modified based on suggestions, combo point cycle section added. Input is always appreciated, particularly where I have placed the text "(HELP!)" with some question or request for clarification.

I believe that Master Poisoner comes out to be worth slightly fewer additional poison procs per hit than Improved Poisons. As to why one would not take both, I don't necessarily know.

Actually, I have done testing that shows that Opportunity and Surprise Attacks are additive. Spec both without Murder. Go out to the Dwarf start area. Kick some level 1 Young Ragged Wolves to verify 0 armor gives 110/220 on a crit. Now backstab them multiple times with a starter dagger. Guess what?
The damage is consistant with (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) * 1.5 + 255 ) * 1.3
and not with
(DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) * 1.5 + 255 ) * 1.2 * 1.1

Even if you want to believe the armor is above 0 but still rounds to 110, the kick test proves the armor is not high enough to give damage reduction consistant with Opportunity and Surprise Attacks being multiplicative.

I suspect the same of Aggression and Surprise Attacks but have not tested this.

Could you post a combat log with the weapon stats so we can verify this?

Question:

On the topic of maces, given their improvement in 2.3 and available weapons in T6 content I'm assuming they will be desired above all other types of specs. If this is the case, how does [Dragonstrike] compare to [Syphon of the Nathrezim]?

When I did the testing, both when Surprise Attacks was first added and recently when I saw that the spreadsheets were calling the combination multiplicative, I did not take combat logs. But quite frankly, this is one instance where a combat log tells you little.

You can't tell from the combat log whether I'm attacking Level 1 Young Ragged Wolves or Level 2. If you get lucky and get a crit and a hit with your kicks, it takes a minimum of 2 to demonstrate armor and using a 1-3 damage dagger, it doesn't take many swings to see min and max damage for both normal hits and crits. It's very easy to replicate. But most of the important information doesn't show in the combat log, like your base AP, equipment, etc.

I have since switched to swords and now have Murder which has been showing some unusual behavior at times given that Wolves are beasts, so I cannot currently repeat this on Live without blowing 20g respecing (and I'm cash tight after buying some LW patterns recently. I plan to do a more comprehensive analysis if I can ever get a character copied to the PTR to see which talent synergies are additive and which are multiplicative and checking again how the PTR is handling Murder. Until that time, I have done testing with this. I could not find a post anywhere on these forums showing where someone tested that they multiplicative. It seems people are assuming they multiply.

I reported this information [Rogue] DPS Spreadsheet
You can verify my math...

The weapon in question was the 1.6 speed 1-3 dagger Dirk sold by the vendor.

Does this apply even when Windfury is unavailable?

We are low on raiding shamans and typically rely on poisons; I've always used Deadly Mainhand, Instant Offhand in the (perhaps mistaken) belief that the faster attack speed of my offhand will generate more poison applications. Does factoring in the extra hits of Sinister Strike/Sword Specialisation outweigh the faster speed? Windfury being unavailable, is it worth applying Instant to the mainhand instead?

If so, at what point in the discrepancy between mainhand-offhand speeds are you more likely to achieve a higher rate of Instant procs with the offhand?

I don't know if you can "assume" that maces will be desired above other specs. 5% additional critical damage is awesome (I love my RED as much as anyone else), but so are extra attacks. I'll get back to you later on this, though, I'll see if I can't whip up a quick model of the new mace spec and do some comparisons.

Both Aldriana's spreadsheet and my spreadsheet seem to indicate that, for my combination of weapons ([Talon of Azshara] and [Merciless Gladiator's Quickblade]), IP/DP is a couple DPS better than DP/IP. The difference is certainly too small to be noticeable. I'd say leave it up to taste. Note, I tried switching to [Blade of Savagery] for my offhand and the difference was still in favor of IP/DP.

Will it be different with other weapon types? Possibly. You're more than welcome to check the spreadsheets yourself. Personally, I think the napkin math to figure out the difference between DP/IP and IP/DP is a bit too complicated, it's much better to just use one of the excellent spreadsheets we have available to us.

Okay, did a quick model assuming that mace spec functions additively with RED (I have no idea if this will be the case, but it seems to be the most likely assumption to make). Started with [Talon of Azshara] and [Merciless Gladiator's Quickblade] as my control set. Then I switched to [Dragonstrike] and [Merciless Gladiator's Bonecracker] and lost 35 DPS. Upgraded the main hand to [Syphon of the Nathrezim] and lost another 11 DPS. Switched the offhand to [Swiftsteel Bludgeon] and gained back 16.5 DPS.

Long story short, looks like mace spec will be right up there with fists in 2.3, but swords and fist+sword will still win out.

I have a question about your assessment on the gems. You constantly say that the ones with agility is superior to the ones with only attack power. For example. 8 Agi should be prefered over 16 AP and 4 Agi 6 Stam should be prefered over 8 AP 6 Stam. However when I do the same comparison in the rogue DPS spreadsheet then the AP ones always come out ahead. So, which is it?

For reference I'm a T4 (few T5) Sword spec rogue with Spiteblade and Merciless Quickblade.

Don't forget [Icon of Unyielding Courage] is a good pre-raid trinket, as well.

I think this is the best place for this. I've heard (mainly from the 2.1 Theorycrafting thread) that Mutilate falls significantly behind combat, due to some change in 2.1. Can anyone elaborate on this? I just haven't been able to find any solidly-stated reason why it falls behind besides "it just does;" maybe something about haste and Combat Potency, but I don't *think* that's a big concern until haste rating gets more common on gear, and something about less out of Windfury but I don't know why unless running with DP/DP.

Oops, sorry for not getting back to you on this. My answer would be that it can vary greatly depending on your current gear and the buffs with which you evaluate your DPS. In general, I'd do two things:

1) compare the output from both spreadsheets to make sure it's not just a difference in the modeling
2) value the opinion given by the spreadsheets slightly higher than general rules such as the ones I've given

Guidelines are great, but don't necessarily trust them as law. If the spreadsheets tell you that AP gems are better at your gear level and with the buffs you get in raids, then go with AP gems.

Will add, thanks for reminding me.

"On gem selection: only gem for socket bonuses that provide offensive stats (hit rating, crit rating, AP), and only if they are achievable using solely red and yellow gems. If you are socketing for a bonus, always use [Rigid Dawnstone] in yellow sockets and [Glinting Noble Topaz] in red sockets, unless you are nearing the hit cap, in which case use [Glinting Noble Topaz] in yellow sockets and [Delicate Living Ruby] in red sockets."

Curious, why is Glinting (4hit 4agi) a better choice than Wicked (4crit 8AP)?

Just wondering because I'm at 300hit right now and any gem slots I have to fill I planned on using Wicked. If there is a reason Glinting is superior I would love to be enlightened.

Attack power and crit gems should not be used in Rogue Gear, unless the AP or crit gem is greater than a Delicate Living Ruby. A Glinting Noble Topaz is used in a red or yellow slot to help close the gap of your hit cap. I myself use the Crimson Sun (24 ap ruby) in my Netherblade chest, as I am hit capped at 300. The Crimson Sun is far superior dps compared to a Delicate Living Ruby. I chose the Pulsing Amethyst for my Deathmantle pants. It's a wonderful gem for the slot, again I am hit capped. I'm considering using a Stone of Blades (12 crit rating dawnstone) in something when I can squeeze it in.

A Delicate Living Ruby (8 agi) gives you 8 attack power, 4.4 crit, plus dodge and armor. The Paladin blessing Kings increases agility by 10%. Kings does not increase ap or crit, only base stats.

I laugh (on the inside) every time I see a rogue using a Wicked Noble Topaz in the red slot of their Netherblade chest. There is never a time it would make sense. If you need a yellow gem to make your meta work, chances are you are low on hit, and therefore a Glinting Noble Topaz is a far superior choice to a Wicked Noble Topaz.

(If you were to armory me at the moment, I'm wearing my Thalasian Wildercloak, and not the Drape of the Dark Reavers, which is what I wear to raid. Also mace spec, as the guild I am applying to does not raid again until Tuesday)

Check out buffed dps. Stacking AP over agi gives you bigger boost when unbuffed/solo grinding, but buffed with BoK, agi takes the lead. And we care only for raids dps anyway so Vulajin is correct

Using the simple AP conversions from the topic gives us:

4 crit @ 1.6 AP = 6.4 AP

This gives Wicked a total value of 6.4 + 8 = 14.4 AP

Compare to Glinting:

4 hit @ 2.3 AP = 9.2 AP
4 agi @ 2.2 AP = 8.4 AP

Total for Glinting is 9.2 + 8.4 = 17.6 AP - clearly superior.

This of course assumes that you have not reached the hit cap, at which point the value of hit approaches 0 giving Wicked a clear advantage over glinting. For red sockets the Delicate (8 agi) still beats Wicked of course.

What I really want to know is where the value of 2.3 AP for 1 haste rating comes from. Using the rogue DPS spreadsheet, I get a raid-buffed value of 0.82 AEP for haste, which translated to AP is roughly 1.7 (AP clocks in at .49 AEP for me).

Anyone done any calculation of the new mace spec with 5% more crit damage?

edit: I'm stupid.

Comparing the talon to dragonstrike is rough, given the talons nice pve stats. How much of the dps loss can be purely attributed to a stat loss, and how much comes from the spec change?

Also, since mace and claw will be very similar in specialization, and the mace does have a haste proc still --does this mean that a Mace/Sword build becomes as valid for dps as a claw/sword post 2.3?

While not made clear the person you are quoting is referring to an equivalence of AP not direct AP.
I expect if you read more of the theory threads around here you would have picked that up.

I have to admit the 1 agi = 2 AP puzzled me a bit, especially the 2.2 with kings part. However, given that my gear currently yields .49 AEP for AP according to the rogue gear sheet, assuming that 1 agi = 2 AP isn't outrageous as a rule of thumb. This is stat weighting we're talking about after all, even if using AP as a unit might lead to misunderstandings.

Well, using Talon as a baseline functions to show how a mace build using T5-equivalent weapons would compare to a sword build using T5-equivalent. Obviously there aren't any maces with better stats, which I think is the pertinent info. You can see from the comparison to the Syphon that Dragonstrike is likely the best of the bunch, although I have no clue at all what kind of proc rate the Rod has, so I can't fairly model that.

My rough estimates show that a mace/sword build will be quite competitive, very slightly behind fist/sword, where fist/sword is very slightly behind sword/sword. All these estimates assume that mace spec's 5% crit damage functions additively with RED. If it functions differently, the numbers will be skewed.

Also, check your PM's momentarily.

Regarding people commenting on "1 Agi = 2 AP"...I'm confused as to how you could call me on that, but not get confused when I went on to equate crit rating and hit rating to AP amounts. Obviously the table is meant to value the DPS contribution from any stat in terms of the amount of pure AP it would take to get equal DPS contribution.

If anyone would like to help me correct my wording for that portion so that it's more clear and I don't have people jumping on me in the future for "spouting misinformation," please feel free.

While I understood what you meant it won't be obviously clear to new readers, given that this is a summary post to get new people up to speed perhaps you should note it in the first post along with your other abbreviations?
Even better would be to use a different abbreviation, maybe APE or APe, the e/E for equivalence?
*I think there is/was a system using AEP but my brain is not clear on this anymore, I also seem to recall the rating you are doing to be different from the way that system works.

I know with the feral druid stuff we ended up using KP (kitty points) to avoid the confusion but that was a while ago on the official forums which I haven't visited in a while, the druids here just use straight AP as well.

Probably the main problem is that Agi = 2AP is what used to be true for hunters. If it had been a weird value like Agi = 2.24782 then it would've been clear that it's an equivalence.

AEP is Agility Equivalence Points, which was equating everything to 1 point of agility instead of 1 point of AP. AEP values are generally less than 1, while APe (or whatever) are generally more than 1. AP is generally easier to equate to anyway, as agility has crit involved which is always a bit funny (lots of modifiers because of RED and other stuff).

Vul,

I'd reword into something like "AEP" or "AtkEP" (I personally prefer AtkEP for the calculation you're doing, as it's "Attack Power Equivalency Points"). Hold on, I'll just copy the section and edit, and if you like it, you can just copy it back into the original post.

or if you prefer AEP (though personally I don't because I get that confused with Agility Equivalency ..):

@Vul/rogue community,

Recently I've been reading everywhere about combat sword dps in comparison to combat dagger dps, and in every comparison drawn swords comes out top hands down. Now when I first saw these posts popping up on the official rogue forums about everyone turning to swords I stuck it through with daggers, as generally I don't beleive anything on those BS forums.

I am not benign to the fact that on paper swords > daggers (combat) and will not flat out deny objective truths. However the amount of dps I still produce easily equals the other two combat rogues in my guild (who are both swords). Comparing our profiles you will see that we are pretty much all equally geared:

The World of Warcraft Armory

The World of Warcraft Armory

The World of Warcraft Armory

(I would appreciate no commenting about improving my current stats - I know 306 +hit is far from optimal with the amount of AP I have, but there are some major upgrades in store so right now there would be no use in re-socketing my gear accordingly as I usually do if I receive upgrades).

So I am just inquiring as to WHY combat daggers is such a no go for most people, even in mid-high end BT? In my experience it's as viable as combat swords.

Thanks in advance for answers,

Manuva.

P.S. Sorry for taking it slightly off topic, but I thought posting a new thread about this is pointless.

Everyone has their rockstar players and their not-as-rockstar players. You'd see a DPS boost by going swords, and you'd still beat those guys. Your example proves that player skill > spec and gear, and that spec/gear only make a difference when they're either drastically different (i.e. T6 vs T4 gear or really crappy spec), or when player skill is very similar.

I can show you WWS of fights where my holdout frost mage beats the snot out of a similarly equipped fire mage - but that doesn't mean frost beats fire. It means he's pushing really hard, and my fire mage isn't.

Edit to add: I by no means am suggesting "You should go swords" - I (personally) think daggers is within acceptable limits of swords as far as raid viability, and you're certainly proving that you deserve your spot - I'm merely addressing the fallacy raised by "Well, I do more damage with X spec" - small sample size. Also, seeing as there's what, 7(?) dagger drops through the raid game, vs the 4 sword drops (Netherspite, Morogrim, Sharhaz, Anetheron..) pre-Illidan, it's always good to have a little spread so that more gear gets used. :P

As far as your fellow rogues, Ciara has great gear that's just gemmed all wrong - Blazefury is also a less optimal offhand (wish that wasn't the case, buut). She's got +7 agi on her boots, that's .. a pre-BC enchant. Solid Star of Elune is never a rogue purchase, except maybe for resist or pvp gear (and even then . . . ). Her spec doesn't have any fundamental errors, though having Imp Evisc, I get a funny feeling she might be using it too much, which would be less than optimal.

Eldorian has good gear, and generally good gem choices (I'd skip the 4crit/6sta for 4agi/6sta gems..) His talent spec is darn similar to Ciara's, so he might be overusing Evisc as well.

Since I'm into the armory critique game, I looked at your gear - it IS somewhat surprising that you're beating those two out, seeing as your gear is mostly T4 level, whereas theirs is mostly T5+. You do have a few flaws in your gemming as well - you need 2 blues to activate your meta gem, yet you do so with a red slot in your hat that has a great set bonus (bad), and then 1 slot in a belt with 2 blue slots and a decent set bonus. Also, the set bonus on the NB breastplate is really nice as well, so you have 3 blue slots that could take blue gems without costing you anything, and you're utilizing one of them... :P Specwise, I think you'd see some improvement (mostly from the accessability of being able to run 1s/3r) in moving 2/2 Murder into 2/3 Ruthlessness. Other than that, looks totally clean.

Probably more than you asked for, but heyyy, why not. :P

Of course combat daggers are VIABLE, that's not the issue in the least. At worst, combat swords are roughly equivalent to combat daggers. At best, they are superior in DPS. Now let's think in addition the utility that one gains from that. You can go deeper into the assassination tree for more DPS gains and you are free from positional restraints.

In Hyjal, you sometimes have to tank the caster trash, sometimes you can't safely get behind a boss, etc.

When you add the utility to the DPS, combat swords comes out as a pretty clear winner in the overall best raid department. However, this does not mean combat daggers is not viable, of course it is, but it's not optimal, or in many cases, friendly to manage.

As to why you stay competitive/beat the other rogues in your guild, there's a number of reasons, all anecdotal. Maybe you run a tighter rotation, pay more attention to CD's, get more procs, pop more potions, etc. There's a number of intangibles that can cause identically geared rogues with identical specs to perform not identically.

Hopefully this answers your question.

Purely for the sake of arguement....

The implied proof here is that a player that has 'skill' yields better results than a player that has no/less 'skill'. The same is true for 'good' gear vs 'bad' gear. There is no way to meaningfully quantify whether 'skill' (and its implications) are > or < 'gear'. Spec and gear ALWAYS make a difference, as each marginal change in how talent points are spent, or how gear is itemized has a non-zero change on a relevant variable in the game, whether a stat on the stat sheet, DPS, health, etc. (which I guess are all stats on the stat sheet :P). Only reason one might say that these two things 'don't matter' is that they are not quantifiable until 'skill' can be controlled out of the equation...

Granted this post is more relevent to a thread about raid-leading, but its something good for everyone to be aware of when thinking (incorrectly) that you can compare your dps against anyone else's in the raid (with very specific exceptions).

Definitely true. I think the important thing to glean, though, is that skill is definitely a consideration. I've heard many a rogue quip that playing a rogue takes zero skill, hell, I've certainly joked about it from time to time. However, we regularly see instances where a rogue with a particular level of gear, gemmed and specced properly, defies logic by putting out DPS that rogues half his level could achieve.

There are a lot of intangibles at play. Sometimes, it has to do with how you survive during fights. Sometimes, it has to do with how attentively you keep on target. Sometimes, it has to do with simply being more awake and alert during a raid than someone else. Never let yourself believe for a second, though, that maximizing your DPS takes zero skill. There's a wide gulf between your max theoretical DPS output and what you can do if you just go on autopilot during raids.

...sorry, a lot of that rant is horribly off-topic, but it's just something I've talked about with my guild lately.

Has anyone looked into +5% to crit damage via mace spec as being superior to +5% extra attack via sword spec in 2.3? I sit around 40% crit raid buffed, and I'm sure there's some point in which one spec becomes superior to the other, depending on your ap/crit.

Post #30 in this very thread.

(edit) Never mind, I see, you're looking for information on how it may scale with gear. Let me see if I can't cook up some numbers on that.

(edit 2) Taking the same spreadsheet I used to do the comparison from post #30, I first started with [Talon of Azshara] and [Merciless Gladiator's Quickblade]. Theoretical DPS: 1407.68.

Arbitrarily, I add 1000 AP. DPS increases by 290.57.
Now I remove that AP and instead arbitrarily add 600 crit rating. DPS increases by 285.38.

Now I switch weapons to [Dragonstrike] and [Merciless Gladiator's Bonecracker]. Theoretical DPS: 1372.82.

Arbitrarily, I add 1000 AP. DPS increases by 285.09.
Now I remove that AP and instead arbitrarily add 600 crit rating. DPS increases by 297.77.

Obviously, the implication is that maces scale better with crit rating after the change, but swords continue to scale better with AP. Additionally, it would clearly take ungodly amounts of crit rating for the mace bonus to scale past the inherent DPS deficit it suffers at this gear level (and itemization doesn't really favor maces past this gear level, either, whereas swords have one more tier to go).

Totally skimmed right past that. Thanks.

(edit) It answered the question roughly. I was just thinking that when you got 2400ish+ ap and 40%ish+ crit, that the 5% extra crit damage would outweigh the MH sword proc.

Not sure if it has been mentioned, but I noticed under the gear enchants section in your post you mentioned dexterity and cat's swiftness however you did not say anything about the Surefooted enchant. Based on your AP conversion, dexterity (12 agility = 24 AP), and cat's swiftness (9 agility = 18 AP). Since you're saying 1 hit rating = 2.3 AP, then shouldn't surefooted be right up there as well? (10 hit rating = 23 AP)

Roughly, going by just white damage, you get an extra sword attack proc every 20 swings. Brief check of the Illidan WWS last night shows my MH hitting for an average (noncrit)of 523, with a 34% average crit, so the average sword proc would hit for 700?

So for mace spec, in that 20 swings, the extra crit damage would have to add up to more than 700 damage, or 35 damage a swing. Average MH crit was ~1192, which would occur 6.8 times in those 20 swings. +5% damage of 1192 is 59.6 damage * 6.8 occurances in 20 swings = 405 damage, and that's just counting MH swings.

Seems like sword spec would still be superior, unless I suck at math, which is very likely.

(edit - I'm using s2 MH and s2 OH, which have a very confined damage range, so it's likely that the wider range on maces ie syphon, s2 mace, etc would make up for some of the lost damage.)

That raises an interesting question...for raiding purposes, does anyone actually use Surefooted? It's definitely a good DPS enchant, but the allure of Cat's Swiftness is actually the speed boost, which you can't replicate with any combination of stats. I vaguely recall a derivation in the first post of the enhancement shaman thread showing that Cat's Swiftness easily surpasses any other enchant if you spend a certain percentage of a fight having to move between targets. It was a small percentage.

If anyone can make a serious case that Surefooted is useful and is used in raids, then I will be sure to add a note saying so. Otherwise, perhaps I will instead add a summary of my above paragraph explaining why Cat's Swiftness is preferred over the other two.

Cat's swiftness is 6 agility + runspeed, not 9. (So 12 AEP +whatever you value runspeed at, which I value relatively high).

Surefooted is a decent enchant if you need the hit rating, but given that Dexterity is easier to get, takes 1 less primal nether (i.e. 0), and is better (even if by only 1 AEP) then I'd argue for going Dexterity if you're considering only damage output. I have Cat's Swiftness on my boots, and I doubt I'm going back - there's just far too many fights where movement is a key concept. I think Aldriana had a post on it somewhere in the gear thread that said she used two pairs of boots, one with swiftness, the other without - and swapped them based on the fight.... and that she used the swiftness boots far more and was putting it on her next upgrade... that's pretty much my exact sentiment.

I believe, and I think the post I responded to supports, that a T4 geared character with a reasonably higher level of skill will equally perform, if not outperform, a T5/T6 geared character. While it's true you can't exactly quantify it, I still will assert (also as a raid leader) that skill is the largest variable in raid performance. This is assuming that we're talking about "viable" specs and "raid gear", I'm not saying a 0/0/0 kid in greens can outdps a sluggish T6 geared rogue, but I DO think that skill plays a much larger factor than "daggers vs swords", or "T4 vs T5 gear".

Well I'm clearly not in the most amazing raiding guild around. Currently we are only 3 bosses into SSC and 2 in TK, but I've always based my rogue's gearing around what information i can find from the more experienced, and the socket/enchant choices of some of the best guilds in the world.

As long as I've been watching rogues in those guilds armory pages get updated, they've always seemed to prefer surefooted to any other enchant.

Just to reference you to where I'm looking:

The World of Warcraft Armory
The World of Warcraft Armory
The World of Warcraft Armory

I'm not going to go specifically into the math on run speed, but if you just think logically about it and compare the amount of time you spend moving to your target, to the amount of time you spend dpsing, you can then calculate exactly (theoretically of course) how much dps you gain from the movement speed. Take the total amount of time spent running x.08% to find out how much time that movement speed enchant saves you, and then multiply that by your personal DPS achieved that fight will give you how much more damage you could have done. In most fights it seems incredibly miniscule to me. Although in specific fights like Al'ar the number might be a lot higher, personally I just don't see an incredibly significant value in the runspeed to justify taking the enchant.

edit: also, sorry my mistake about the 6 agility on the enchant

For Cat's Swiftness, read the opening post in the Enhance Shammy Theorycraft thread. They have there that a 6 minute fight with more than 4.68 second of movement, Cat's Swiftness offers more damage. Afaik, that's pretty much every single fight.

Might be a small number, but you're comparing it to the opportunity cost of 6 agility (going from Dex (12agi) to Cat's (6agi + runspeed). I'm pretty sure that in any fight involving movement (as noted above), you can make up 6 agi's worth of damage by getting just a few more autoattacks off.

Here's the latest post in the shaman thread on cat's swiftness.

http://elitistjerks.com/470765-post2228.html

Rough numbers on run speed:

With my current gear, according to the rogue gear sheet, I do 1486.91 DPS. The loss of 6 agility reduces this to 1482.92.

Lets assume that without Cat's Swiftness, I spend X seconds out of every minute moving; thus, my damage per minute is (60-X)*1486.91. With Cat's Swiftness, it would instead be (60-x/1.08)*1482.92. Equating these and solving for X, we find that the break-even point is at X = 2.1. So, by this estimate, if you're spending more than 2.1 seconds out of every minute moving, Cat's Swiftness is better.

In practice, this isn't *quite* a fair estimate, since movement time generally doesn't diminish your yellow DPS, only your white DPS; hence, this calculation should be redone considering only white damage loss. But this is probably a reasonable estimate to start from.

So, any fight in which you spend more than 2.1 seconds out of every minute moving favors Cat's Swiftness. So, for instance, in T5 instances, this would be everything except Tidewalker and, depending on your guild's strategy, Void Reaver; for these instances, Cat's Swiftness is thus fairly clearly superior. However, the situation is a bit less clear in the T6 instances; I would argue that for Anetheron, Kaz'rogal, Naj'entus, Teron, Gurtogg, and Reliquary there is insufficient running to warrant using Cat's Speed, and there are a few others where it is questionable (Rage Winterchill and Anetheron, for instance) where it doesn't make sense to use Cat's Swiftness from a DPS perspective but one could argue that there's reason to do so from a survival perspective, given that there is AoE to run out of. Also note that one one of the remaining fights (Shahraz) you will not be wearing your regular boots anyway, so Cat's Swiftness is only the superior choice for your day-to-day boots on 5 out of 13 fights.

My current solution to this problem is to maintain 2 sets of boots, one with Cat's Swiftness on for movement fights, and one with 12 agi on them for more sustained fights. This does require one to have access to two reasonably comparable sets of boots, of course, but I do believe it's the right decision in general.

Regarding Surefooted: the snare break is only useful from a PvE perspective on Vashj, and, in practice, using Vanish/Cloak/Imp Sprint is usually sufficient to stay clear on her. As such, the only motivation for Surefooted (from a purely PvE standpoint) would be if 10 hit is superior DPS to 12 agi, which is not true for the majority of raid-buffed PvE rogues.

In brief: 12 agi and Cat's Swiftness are competitive enchants, with each being superior on some fights. Surefooted is generally inferior from a PvE perspective.

Linked from the enchants section to your post, Ald. We can always count on you for an insightful post when one is needed.

I'm thinking of adding another section, under the general heading of "Mechanics." I don't want to exclude information, but I also don't want to cram the post so full of crap that no one reads it. Thus, I'm thinking of omitting things like the formulas provided by sp00n on the first page, and rather focusing on things such as cooldown management (with a link to a thread where I recall seeing the effects of stacking BF/AR/etc. versus not stacking them analyzed), Evis vs. Envenom, Shiv vs. Sinister Strike. Any thoughts?

Just to chipping in on combat mutilate builds:

OH weapon speed: sorta a toss up as mentioned. However, with a fast OH weapon and the poison talents, using Instant Poison OH becomes a better option.

Fleet Footed: marginal for PvE right now, but it'll be very good in 2.3.

Mutilate cycle: although it was shown in the talent tree, I think special emphasis needs to be put on Ruthlessness. That extra combo point makes it viable to use a finisher after a single Mutilate, and that's what you want to be doing. That improves your chance at Relentless Strikes working: your only energy since you don't have Combat Potency.

If you're doing 2 Mutilates before a finisher (ex: Ruth didn't proc & Mutilate didn't crit), then you're suddenly in the hole energy-wise, and hurting your dps.


Edit:

Dual Deadly is good in two cases. One - if the mob has high enough armor that Eviscerates are wasteful. Two - if the mob can strip poisons. Good example here is Tidalvess on the Fathom Lord fight. He can drop Greater Poison Cleansing totems which can mess up your Deadly stacks, and worst case, cause you to briefly lose the Mutilate bonus damage. Deadly on both weapons keeps it stacked, even though Envenom is not so hot on him.

You'll always be doing at least some Evisc / Envenom because you generate combo points faster than SnD and Rupture wear off.

Alright well reguardless, i just thought that if dexterity was worth mentioning for boot enchant, surefooted would be as well. currently i'm sitting at 276 hit rating, so i personally don't think i can give up that 10 hit rating.

I don't have to agree with everything posted on these forums right?

On the contrary, I wish more people would contradict me and get some discussion going so that this thread stays up and so that I get ideas for ways to improve it.

No, you're not obligated to agree with everything on these forums, but, allow me to ask you:

In what sense can you "not afford to give up that 10 hit rating"? If you will demonstrably do more damage with 12 agi than with 10 hit on your boots, why does it matter what the actual hit rating number is?

I bring this up purely because it's a common mistake I see people make. A lot of people are bought into the idea of magic numbers - "I must have 275 hit rating or I'm gimping myself", and the like. The thing is: there is nothing fundamentally special about being at or near the hit cap. Hit is a powerful stat, so items that have a lot of it tend to be good, so if you select "good" equipment you will tend to have a lot of hit; however, it is important to remember that what makes the items good is not that they have a lot of hit, but that they generate good DPS output. Hit is just a number; damage is what matters in the end. And regardless of your current stats, there always exist tradeoffs. Even if the Surefooted enchant was the *only* you hit you had, there would exist some amount of AP, Crit, and other stats that would be worth trading it for. If there was a +1000 AP enchant, would you still feel those 10 points of hit were necessary?

Now, this is an extreme example, of course, but it is true that most rogues - and in particular almost all rogues who are optimizing in terms of 25-man raids - will benefit more from 12 agi than 10 hit, and, as such, I would encourage them to not get too fixated on exactly what their hit number is right now and make the superior DPS choice.

I'm not trying to pick on you, and I'm sorry if it comes across that way. This is just one of my pet peaves .

I don't know. I mean, I understand exactly what your saying in your example, however, I just have it drilled into my brain that every single swing I miss is a huge potential amount of increased damage dealt. I know it's argued all the time that there is no magic hit number, but I still put more value on closing the +hit rating cap with my gear, and THEN focusing on the other stats.

This may not be the most ideal way to gear yourself theoretically, but it's what I do, and I absolutely dominate the dps boards in our raids, so I must be doing something right.

I see rogues around all the time with gear that looks almost identical to my own except the cram in 8 agility gems, wicked noble topaz etc etc, and they sit around 225 hit rating. They have much more attack power and much more crit than myself, but I believe I would destroy their dps.

I set this magic *never go below this number* for myself at 252 (+16 % hit since we regularly do raid with a moonkin) although i try to shoot higher since imp FF isn't always going to be there for me. (actually clearing up to alar right now with no moonkin)

As soon as i get my tunic of assassination upgraded to bloodsail brigand's vest (hopefully this week!), i'll switch to cat's swiftness k?

Well, Ald, there is ONE magic number for hit rating - I mean, if you're missing Sinister Strikes... I mean, that's not a huge concern for combat rogues - though, I suppose at REALLY low gear levels it might be once we're switched to Expertise .. but that would be ~60 hit rating. However, for a Mutilate spec that doesn't pick up precision, that "magic hit number" is going to be a little more important, and it is at 142. (ceil(9 x 15.769))

Edit to add: I'm not trying to be a devil's advocate - for any raiding situation, which Ald's normal stuff is applied to, she is 100% correct. I think this post caters to a slightly broader crowd, including people who might be raiding in pvp specs. It's the only reason I posted that.. I swear.

So, a couple of points here:

Yes, it's true, every attack that doesn't hit is DPS loss. But, by the same token, every hit that doesn't crit is damage lost as well. As is every attack that is made with the opponent being at full mitigation due to lack of armor pen. As is every attack that doesn't get made due to not stacking haste rating.

I mean, I see where you're coming from, and it's a totally valid way to look at things... but what's important to remember is that *all* stats increase your DPS, so the relevant question is not *if* you're gaining DPS from stacking that stat, but *how much* DPS you're gaining, and, in turn, *how much* DPS you're losing by not stacking the other available stats.

As a general rule of thumb you want to be socketing with either agi or hit. There are exceptions, to be sure; but it's a good starting point. So socketing with Delicate is perfectly valid; socketing with Wicked, less so.

So, to be perfectly technical: 60 hit (or whatever it is) is not a "you must not drop below this line", but a "below this line hit is worth more than it was before, so it takes *even more* other assorted stats in order to make it worth it".

And to be even more perfectly technical: the amount of difference it makes is actually surprisingly small. Hit below the yellow hit cap is only worth about 10-15% more than hit above the yellow hit cap.

Of course, while we're on the topic: it's pretty much impossible to wind up with that little hit without actively trying to, so the distinction is not necessarily relevant.

I'm afraid you just had to hit one of my pet peeves; drawing conclusions based on your performance compared to other rogues in your raids.

As was repeated earlier in this thread, even subtle differences in play style will make a much larger difference than gemming delicate/wicked over rigid/glinting, etc.

You may dominate the meters now, but that doesn't mean your +hit tunnel vision is the cause. While their lack of focus on +hit likely contributes to the difference, I would wager that you could further increase the gap by going for dps instead of hit.

I did some calculations here: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13122-r...ls/#post389595

This was before the haste nerf, but the base thesis is still valid.

Do misses have an energy discount? Lord knows it's been a very, VERY long time since I missed an SS. And heck, while we're on the topic - do parries get an energy discount as well?

Well this is easy - get an addon like recount, record a trash raid, then record a boss fight and check it out. You will see what you white damage is, what % miss you have, how much exactly it is hurting your dps, then be able to calculate if the hit will be better or the agi one. Generally hit scales better with the gear than the agi/ap if you are below hit cap

Yeah, you only lose I believe 7 energy for missed/dodged/parried SSes. With finishers you lose all the energy, unless you have quick recovery of course.

Edit: it's 8 energy.

Surprise Attacks guarantees that no finishers can be dodged.
2/2 Quick Recovery means that finishers which fail to hit only cost 20% of their energy.
Finishers are not a factor anyway, with Surprise Attacks you get no benefit from Expertise unless your finishers are in danger of being parried and the energy cost of finishers is small compared to CP generators.

If you are working on a 0 Energy budget then your next special will come in when you have sufficient energy available.

One reason for not doing things this way but people often do.

In this case a dodged/parried CP generator means you have to wait at least one energy tick before you can try the special again. 2 seconds deeper into your DPS cycle.

Any reduction in dodge rate is useful in that it makes DPS cycles easier to maintain and DPS easier to sustain.

Blizzard have also introduced a new food buff which gets +20 Hit Rating, this takes some of the pain out of the new hit cap.

i want your opinion please...

I am about to get the [Merciless Gladiator's Right Ripper] or the [Merciless Gladiator's Slicer]

currently i am using the [Vindicator's Brand] and the [Merciless Gladiator's Quickblade]

What do you propose to purchase now? (PVE Spec)

thanks in advance

You right, i think the hype about swords make people think that swords is WAY better then daggers. But if you take the numbers of the first page for example, saying swords is 5% more dps then daggers it equals to 1050 dps for a swordrogue if the daggers holds 1000 dps. So in reality the differents is not much. Ofcourse if the rogue got the warglaives its another story, but then again there are no comparable daggers

Looking at a few of these new Subtlety changes, is it possible now that dagger rogues may end up being able to output more DPS? With Dirty Deeds changes (20% more damage against targets below 35% health) and Shadowstep able to be used while out of stealth, there is a possibility of generating a solid amount of damage. What do you think?

I've been thinking about what precisely to put in the mechanics section, and here's a little thought I had with regard to cooldown syncing and its effect on DPS. Assume ability A with cooldown C(A) and ability B with cooldown C(B) = k*C(A), for some real value k > 1. Either k is an integer (e.g. C(A) = 2 min and C(B) = 4 min, so k = 2) or k is not an integer (e.g. C(A) = 2 min and C(B) = 3 min, so k = 1.5).

Additionally, assume there are three possible strategies:

1) We use both cooldowns on cooldown.
2) We use A on cooldown, but hold off on B until the next time A is available.
3) We use B on cooldown, but hold off on A until the next time B is available.

If k is an integer, our calculations are very simple. Since C(B) is a multiple of C(A), ability A will always be available when B becomes available. Thus:

1) If we use both abilities on cooldown, we can consider a timeframe of length C(B). Over this timeframe, we will use A exactly k times, and B exactly once. The cooldowns will sync up exactly once.

2) If we hold off on B until A becomes available, that won't change anything, since A is always available when B becomes available.

3) If we hold off on A until B becomes available, trivially, this will be inferior. Rather than being used k times in C(B), A will be used only once. B will still be used once. The abilities will still sync up once.

Thus, when k is an integer, it is obvious that strategy 1/2 is best.

If k is not an integer, our calculations become slightly less simple. However, we can take a timeframe of C(A)*C(B). Over this time, we know that the abilities will sync up a number of times equal to the greatest common factor between C(A) and C(B) (e.g. if C(A) = 6 and C(B) = 9, greatest common factor is 3, C(A)*C(B) = 54, so they will sync up 3 times in 54 minutes).

1) If we use both abilities on cooldown, we can consider a timeframe of C(A)*C(B)/gcf. Over this timeframe, we will use A exactly C(B)/gcf times, and B exactly C(A)/gcf times. The abilities will sync up once.

2) If we hold off on B until A becomes available, then we can consider a timeframe of ceil(k)*C(A). Over this timeframe, we will use A exactly ceil(k) times, and B exactly once. The abilities will sync up once.

3) If we hold off on A until B becomes available, then we can consider a timeframe of C(B), or k*C(A). Over this timeframe, we will use A exactly once, and B exactly once. The abilities will sync up once.

Here it is less obvious which is best. First, we must compare strategy 2 to strategy 3. Strategy 2 has a ratio of usage of ability A to time equal to ceil(k)/(ceil(k)*C(A)) = 1/C(A). Strategy 3's same ratio is 1/(k*C(A)). Since k > 1, strategy 2's ratio is greater. However, strategy 2 has a syncing ratio of 1/(ceil(k)*C(A)), while 3's ratio is 1/(k*C(A)); since k is not an integer, ceil(k) > k, therefore strategy 3's ratio is greater. Let the DPS increase factor of a cooldown be quantified by I(x). The DPS change going from strategy 2 to strategy 3 is:

I(A)/(k*C(A)) - I(A)/C(A) + I(A)*I(B)/(k*C(A)) - I(A)*I(B)/(ceil(k)*C(A)) =
(I(A) + I(A)*I(B))/(k*C(A)) - I(A)/C(A) - I(A)*I(B)/(ceil(k)*C(A)) =
1 + I(B) - 1 - k*I(B)/ceil(k) < (note that k/ceil(k) < 1 by definition if k is not an integer)
I(B) - I(B) = 0

The DPS change is less than zero; in other words, by switching from strategy 2 to strategy 3, you will always lose DPS. Now we want to figure out how strategy 1 compares to strategy 2. First, we can trivially find that A is used with a ratio of 1/C(A), and B with a ratio of 1/(k*C(A)). Note that strategy 2's ratio for A was also 1/C(A), and its ratio for B was 1/(ceil(k)*C(A)). However, 1's ratio of syncing the cooldowns is gcf/(C(A)*C(B)). This makes for a slightly more complicated analysis. The DPS change going from strategy 1 to strategy 2 is:

I(A)/C(A) - I(A)/C(A) + I(B)/(ceil(k)*C(A)) - I(B)/(k*C(A)) + I(A)*I(B)/(ceil(k)*C(A)) - I(A)*I(B)*gcf/(C(A)*C(B)) =
I(B)/ceil(k) - I(B)/k + I(A)*I(B)/ceil(k) - I(A)*I(B)*gcf/C(B) =
(1 + I(A))/ceil(k) - 1/k - I(A)*gcf/C(B) =
k*(1 + I(A))/ceil(k) - 1 - k*I(A)*gcf/C(B) <
I(A) - k*I(A)*gcf/C(B)

The DPS change going from strategy 1 to strategy 2 must be less than this given quantity. Thus, if we set this quantity equal to zero, we can find the conditions under which strategy 1 must be better than strategy 2.

I(A) - k*I(A)*gcf/C(B) = 0
I(A) = k*I(A)*gcf/C(B)
1 = k*gcf/k*C(A)
1 = gcf/C(A)
C(A) = gcf

If C(A) is a common factor between C(A) and C(B), then C(B) must be a multiple of C(A). Note that this is not a contradiction of our assumptions; rather, this is simply using the general case to illustrate what we already proved above when discussing integer values of k.

If C(A) is not the greater common factor between C(A) and C(B), we cannot actually make any general-case guarantees about strategy 1 versus strategy 2. If C(A) != gcf (and therefore C(A) > gcf), then strategy 2 might be better than strategy 1. If C(A) = gcf, then strategy 1 must be better.

(edit) (edited again -- Note that was formerly here has been invalidated.)

(edit 2) Please correct me if I've made any logical fallacies.

(edit 3) Just noticed a big problem with it. Pay me no heed while I fix this up. :p

(edit 4) Fixed. It's a lot more complex than I originally thought.

You should check the DPS&Gear Spreadsheets on this same forum.
Anyway, just to save you some time, fist+sword would give you SLIGHTLY more dps at the cost of 5talent points. On my current setup I go from 1550 to 1555 dps, which is hardly noticeable.
At the sametime I'm an avid pvper so my combat builds include extra toys like blade twisting or improved kick, so fist+sword is a no-no for me.
Up to you :-)

The difference has little to do with itemisation, skill, or talents.

The fact is that in most TBC endgame encounters a non-Dagger Combat build is better suited for the job.
It was always the case that Combat Daggers excels in a fight that is stable: tank and spank.
Little has changed in that respect.
However the fights we have now, phases including adds for example, and the increased importance of fast trash clearing mean that overall a non-Dagger Combat Rogue brings better performance with it in TBC than a Combat Dagger Rogue does.

So the advantages of playing Combat Daggers in Vanilla WoW no longer outweigh the disadvantages: awkward solo play, rubbish PvP playability. In fact many say that even in tank and spank fights there is little or nothing to be gained being Combat Daggers.

So many people don't bother anymore.

You seem to have missed the fact that, according to our most accurate spreadsheet models these days, combat daggers actually does come out behind sword and fist builds, even in a sustained tank and spank fight. The other disadvantages of being daggers just make it even less desireable.

So, the problem is that in order to get even Dirty Deeds one needs to spec fairly deep in Hemo, meaning you need to sacrifice either assassination or high-end combat, both of which hurt a *lot*. And this is doubly true for Shadowstep. I don't expect those talents to be sufficiently powerful to justify the loss of DPS through other talents for a dagger build.

In fact, I think the big winner in the subtlety changes is... sword builds (shockingly enough). Combat Hemo (11/26/24 and it's ilk) will be the major benefactors of such a change. They will still do less total DPS than Combat, but when you factor in the Hemo debuff it is sufficient to justify a raid slot.

Oddly, this is somewhat reversed now. In purely sustained fights where swords can maintain cycles like 3s5r and keep very high rupture uptime, they blow past daggers. It is in interrupted fights where swords have a hard time maintaining tight cycles that daggers have the ability to compete, as dagger builds are much less reliant on rupture and much more reliant on simply keeping SnD up and backstabbing. Hence, to the extent a dagger rogue is going to be able to keep up at all, it's going to be on trash and interrupted fights, not on purely sustained fights. Which is exactly reversed from what it was pre-BC, but that's the way it goes.

Hello Vulajin,

at first I wanted to thank you for this very informative post. I still got some remarks on the two below quoted passages.

I have ever since been on Combat Daggers until the start of S2, I changed to Maces for more Arena viabilty then. On raids without t4, having no t5 4 bonus yet, the cycle 3s/5r worked for me fine there.
Now I am back to daggers again, still searching for the perfect cycle, and I have to confess that 5s/5r never works out for me, after 5s building up cps again I have about ~7 to 8s left until snd runs out, so it probably is about 5s/2r at max for me, even having t5 4bonus now.
anyone any ideas or experiences?

I spent some time in deep sub in ZA on the PTR. My gear isn't outstanding (hitcap, T4, properly enchanted/socketed etc) and I wasn't in a stacked DPS group, but i was doing considerably better damage as sub-daggers than I was as combat daggers. Specifically, I found that premed->garrote->rupture->relentless->1cp snd was a great opener, and generally followed up by backstab spam, with an occassional hemo or shiv to quickly hit 5cp ruptures.

Also, I macro'ed shadowstep into my backstab spam, so that I would use it (and its associated aggro reduction) every time it was up. It essentially worked like free feint. (i.e., /cast shadowstep /stopcasting /cast backstab).


So, anecdotally, yes, maybe there is a place for shs daggers in raiding. Lets see what the yet-to-be-announced hemo buff looks like? If they find a way to make it more dagger friendly, they we may have a serious contender. I would love it if they 1.) had hemo increase dot damage, 2.) made it into a more stackable buff; so, instead of just refreshing the count, 3 hemos would leave 90 charges of the debuff on the target.

A missed SS/BS/etc uses 20% of the normal energy. So 8 for SS, 12 for BS

I'm also a little uncertain about the gem info here. I think the root of the disagreement comes from the AEP numbers. Where do those come from? My calculated AEP #s from the rogue DPS spreadsheet comes out to 1 AGI = .55 AP = 1.01 hit (buffed w/ kings). For red gems, this would suggest 16 AP is > 8 AGI, and would agree that the optimal yellow is 8 hit (tho barely).

Your AEP numbers are relative to your current gear and buffs. Straight AP is probably a bigger boost for unbuffed dps, while agi will give more dps once raidbuffed with kings+might+shout+flask etc.

@Aldriana:
I find the problems with Dagger builds on trash are the same as before and that Swords has reached at least parity with Daggers on bosses. Mind you I freely admit that issues with gear in the Raids I take part in distort what I am seeing and I have not taken these into account.
What I am seeing on trash is that Sword Rogues with worse gear than me in chaotic fights/small trash are out DPSing me, on bosses and big trash I am leaving them far behind.
With sword rogues of equal gear I tend compete on even terms on bosses only.
A lot of this could be down to me not trying so hard on smaller trash though.

I am a Combat Dagger Rogue, I am impatiently waiting a decent sword drop so I can respec. I am even contemplating PvP to get my weapons that way and I hate PvP with a vengeance. Sorry, I am boring people with my life story :/

@Talda:
I have the 4 set T4 bonus, I am not Ruthlessness specced (should be) but I find that a 1s/3s/5r cycle is still easy to maintain.
Respeccing to 3/3 Ruthlessness 4/5 Lethality should make 1s/3r easier. Doing so makes better use of the 4 set bonus, it hardly features otherwise.

I may have misunderstood something, but how 1 Agi can be worth only 0,55 AP, while 1 Agi gives 1 AP and additionnal crit/dodge ?

Was just wondering how the effect of haste items like Band Of Devastation effects the yellow attacks? Does it calculate it from the stats on the weapon or do it count it after the "new" speed with the haste item?

Stats from the weapon AFAIK (or haste would downgrade your yellow DPS, which would be quite absurd, though absurdity happens). I never noticed a diminution in my yellow hits when under haste effect anyway.

It was articulated a bit mistakeable.
What he meant was that 1 AP is worth 0.55 AEP, 1 agi worth 1 AEP (obviously) and 1 hit 1.01 AEP for his gear.

Hey guys I have a question. WIth 3/3 Imp Faerie Fire what would be the new Hit Cap (consider Precison and Weapon Expertise)? I'm really lost there.

Thaks in advance

3/3 Imp FF gives 3% hit.
2/2 Weapon Expertise was equivalent to 10 Weapon Skill, roughly 3.5% hit.
New Hit Cap is 363 Hit Rating, Hit Rating to Hit% conversion at level 70 is 15.8 = 1% Hit.
3 * 15.8 = 47.4. Round that down, decimals make arithmetic so ugly

363 - 47 = 316

Chuck in the new food buff and you have a hit cap of 296, with a Draenei Warrior in your party you get 281.

Of course to check my figures you may have to search for Imp FF on these forums and read the Weapon Expertise threads.

In the span of 2 seconds, yes. It's fairly mild looking, but still 5%. Over the course of a 10+ minute fight (read as: any raid boss these days) it becomes a more respectable number when weighed against the fact that our job, as a class, is to eek the most possible damage out of a timeframe that we can.

5% more damage is 5% more damage any way you slice it. I guess I'm just of the mind that given the option, why would you purposefully do 5% less damage (all things being equal of course, and pretending you have access to weapon drops that make different builds possible)?

The figure of 5% more DPS for Swords over Daggers hasn't been substantiated.
Any of these comparisons are only meangingful in ideal circumstances and that means never take the results literally.

Stupidly enough it is the Arena OH weapons which bring Swords up, the only other OH sword available before Mount Hyjal, Latros, hardly compares.

I suspect Blizzard were balancing things via itemisation but screwed up royally with Arena PvP items. In more ways than one as well.

It is remarkable that Dagger itemisation continues to be superior in PvE and that if it weren't for Arena gear Combat Daggers would still be the best Raiding spec purely because of that. Well until BT perhaps.

I wonder what the effect of fast high quality OH swords would have had in Vanilla WoW if they were more generally available before Naxx. I do not include Maladath in the fast bracket compared to what you can get now although it was a tasty OH way back when.
A job for the spreadsheet indeed.

It's important to note that Combat Potency didn't exist in Vanilla WoW, so the value of a fast OH, while still important, was not as large as it is now.

Also pre-xpac Sword Spec (and indeed up until 2.1) reset the swing timer when proccing off a yellow attack, making it less desireable than Daggers.

Ermm guys, 2 post mentioning new hit cap... what? I found nowhere in the 2.3 changelog about that, current hit cap is simply 0% white dmg miss... new hit cap will mean base miss % increase or what?

the new hit cap is the same as the old hit cap - the change is that weapon expertise now gives expertise instead of weapon skill. The +hit previously gained from +skill (in the form of -miss) now has to be fully made up for with +hit.

Well if you play 10 min, 50 more dps is 30k damage. And 30k in 10 min is not much imo

The reason you should pick dagger over sword even if swords has higher dps is simple because its 10 times more fun, atleast for me. The only thing i wanted to say was that people seems to choice swords over other speccs because of the "awesome" dps instead of asking themself what
they think is fun. If nihilum had dagger rogues when they took illidan world first, its good enough dps for me atleast

I believe that, over the next day or two, I'll begin updating the first post with some preliminary 2.3 information. So far what we have is a pretty good chunk (if not all) of the new items that will be available, a new weapon enchant on which I feel like I need more data before I can reach any conclusions, and of course, the expertise change, for which we're sort of relying on the assumption that Blizzard isn't changing the base miss rate against a raid boss. If they're not, the 363 hit cap holds. Otherwise, who knows.

Everything will go in a separate section near the top, since it's what people seem to want to know about lately, and none of it is considered final yet. As always, please double check anything I post for accuracy.

Regarding the 5% DPS difference with daggers: I caution everyone not to get too caught up in numbers like that. Such a number is, by necessity, an approximation. Swords, daggers, fists, and maces all scale slightly differently with gear; as a result, the difference will vary slightly. 5% difference assumes a particular level of gear (I believe I did that comparison using the same assumed T4 level of gear I used for the stat weights) that certainly may not be true for everyone. That's why I always stress double-checking any "rule" given here with the spreadsheets.

Run 1s/3r. It works fine as long as you have the 2 piece t4.

Vulajin, as for your combat Daggers section about SnD. It looks fine. I don't see anything wrong with it. Currently i am a huge supporter of the 1s/3r cycle as you are suggesting, and used to run 3s/5s/5r before i had the set bonus.

In Reguards to the attack cycle, I find myself using shiv quite often as opposed to sinister strike when i notice the timer on my deadly poison stack getting low, so i can keep it at 5 poisons. I also use shiv at the beginning of the fight to get my SnD up quicker. Is this acceptable practice to switch this in and out of the attack cycle like I am, or should i just be sticking solely with sinister strike?

I'd like to suggest a section on Rupture.

It may be a no brainer to use it for some of us, but I know some rogues that know little about DPE, assumes Evis is better cause they can see 3K crits once in a while, and thinks Evis scales better.

In a rogue theorycraft thread, the entire idea is maximizing your damage by understanding the supporting math. Choosing not to for fun is fine, knock yourself out. But it does sort of defeat the purpose of a thread centered on, as stated above, maximizing your damage.

For any rogue who takes the current spreadsheets as valid, daggers does less damage then swords - end of story. This doesn't say daggers doesn't do "enough" damage, however. It simply says swords does more, by however small/large a margin your spec/gear/playstyle creates.

and the 5% thing wasn't something I was taking as gospel -- I responded to a post that used it, and I was just making my point referencing it.

Personally, I never Shiv to save DP stacks, but I've never actually done any math to support my practice. So here comes some math:

Looking at my handy spreadsheet here, I can see that over any given span of 12 seconds, I have roughly a 4% chance not to proc DP. So let's assume that means I have a 4% chance to need to Shiv every 12 seconds. Let's completely ignore any other ramifications with respect to my cycle. This means that on average, I'll Shiv once every 300 seconds.

Using my current gear, [Talon of Azshara] and [Merciless Gladiator's Quickblade], my SS damage is roughly 1184, while my Shiv damage is roughly 426. So let's say I'm trading exactly one Sinister Strike for one Shiv every 300 seconds to keep DP up 100% of the time. That's 758 damage given up every 300 seconds.

Now, with my current gear assuming never Shivving, DP deals about 72 DPS. If I increase my DP uptime to exactly 100%, the DPS increases by 3.36. Over 300 seconds, that's an increase of roughly 1007 damage. This assumes 3/5 Vile Poisons. With 0/5 Vile Poisons, it's 899 damage.

So, if you only Shiv in the case where DP is in imminent danger of falling off, then you will gain approximately 0.5-1 DPS. In my opinion, this isn't even remotely worth the kind of micromanagement it would take to make sure you're only Shivving when you aren't going to get a proc and that you always have the GCD to Shiv at that last possible second to refresh the stack.

In other words, never Shiv. Ever. If you need to get SnD up quickly at the start of the fight, use a 1-2 CP SnD before starting your normal cycle. Don't Shiv for it. The speedier gain in CP is nowhere near worth the loss of DPS.

Perhaps I'll throw in a blurb at the start of the CP cycle section.

First, I'd like to say thanks for the great post on maximizing DPS, anytime a new rogue asks I send them here.
I have a question about the change to WF a while back. For me at least (ToA and Arena2 OH, 297 hit) the dps spreadsheet shows that GoA in combination with 2 poisons is actually higher dps (1.5 dps) than WF + poison raid buffed. It also shows there is almost no difference (0.05) between what poison goes on the MH and OH. Are both of these now generally the case? I'm curious as I usually pick my melee group make up and its generally 1 enh shammy, 2-4 rogues, feral druid or dps warrior. Should I stick with GoA regardless of group make up?

Windfury is definitely still better for you, but definitely by a much smaller margin than it used to be. My spreadsheet gives me about a 12 DPS loss switching from WF to GoA+IP. Rule of thumb: if there's a warrior in that group at all, you should have your shaman dropping WF. You also want that warrior in the group because Battle Shout is a gigantic DPS increase, particularly if talented. The feral druid is probably the most dispensable member of the group, so if you need to choose, go with enhance shaman + rogues + fury warrior and have the shaman drop WF. If the group doesn't have a fury warrior (e.g. enhance shaman + feral druid + 3 rogues), then dropping GoA might be better for the group overall.

I would ask why is Salvation rated higher then Might and Kings. Maybe on bosses where an aggro wipe is present in a form of phase or multiple mobs, but on a single target boss I never have problem with threat due to simply Vanishing around 70-80% and then again around 20-30%

I have always shown more DPS from practice and the spreadsheet from DP on MH and IP OH if no Windfury is present. Am I simply missing something again?

I can see using Shiv to reapply DP if it prevents the stack from falling off, as DP falling off is a Very Bad Thing. However, I don't see how Shiv'ing at the start of combat gets SnD off any 'faster'. As I understand it*, SS and Shiv invoke the same GCD, and both award one CP with which to get SND up, which I understand are the only factors that affect how fast SnD can be used. If Shiv and SS are equal in this regard (getting SnD up), you should use whichever skill is higher DPS (or DPE or whatever).

* My conclusion here admittedly is not ironclad, as I am not an expert rogue. (I'm still leveling her, and thus still learning the ins and outs of roguery.) My conclusions, like any good conclusion, is based off assumptions. If my assumptions are valid, then my conclusion is valid (read as: use SS, not Shiv at the start). If I am somehow misinformed on my assumptions, please let me know, as I enjoy learning...

"I can see using Shiv to reapply DP if it prevents the stack from falling off, as DP falling off is a Very Bad Thing"

No it really isn't so terrible. It doesn't happen often and when it does it'll be back soon. All the models assume that deadly poison will do a certain amount of dps based on how often it's applied and its damage value.

You don't need to break the cycle to reapply DP as was demonstrated above (it might provide some infinitesimal dps boost but for most of us at the cost of our rhythm).

As for shiv-ing early, shiv requires a lot less energy than SS does. So if you are obsesses about getting SnD up -- and as the fight goes this is the thing you *must* have up at all times -- then you can shiv your way to some combo pts and SnD with more time on the counter faster than you can do the same with SS. I suppose it depends on your cycle and how you many CP is normal for you before you SnD. If it's a higher number, this might make sense with the proviso that it's still out of rhythm: First pass, 4x shiv, SnD, start real cycle vs. First pass, <normal SS, SnD, start real cycle.

Do you have Salvation on you when doing that?

Salvation is obviously not quantifiable, but it has huge intangible value. On Hydross, Leotheras, Lurker, and Al'ar, at the very least, Salvation has great benefit due to threat wipes or having to DPS adds quickly without pulling aggro on them. Additionally, on Morogrim and Void Reaver, it's easily possible to have threat issues as your gear scales up (since tank threat scales slower than DPS). On Vashj, I would consider Vanishing for threat a liability, since you never know when you may need it on phase 3 to escape being rooted in toxic spores.

Different spreadsheets give different results. However, both the gear spreadsheet and my personal spreadsheet put IP/DP above DP/IP.

Perhaps your tanks are better than the ones I've dealt with, but having played with about 5 different tanks in two different guilds, in most cases I'm generating 90% (or more) of the aggro of the tank even with salvation on. Without salvation, then, I'd be generating something like 125% of his aggro, and thereby would need to spend a lot of time holding back to avoid pulling aggro, even with vanish. Consider: it's 5 minutes between vanishes. If one is dealing 125% of the aggro of the tank, it takes the tank 6.25 minutes to generate this much aggro. Hence, your first vanish would need to occur 75 seconds into the fight to avoid pulling aggro before the 2nd vanish. Thus, one would need to spend the first 75 seconds of the fight dealing less than 80% of your damage potential, which is just a huge waste of damage. Also, there's more potential for accidentally pulling aggro, which is usual fatal and thus an even larger loss of DPS.

I'm not going to say that there aren't combinations of really good tanks and undergeared rogues that render salvation unnecessary; but I do think the general rule that salvation is the most important rogue buff is correct.

Maybe I wait too long to start DPS, but I normally I can blow AR/BF right around 85-90%, vanish after and be good on threat. (I am mainly basing this off of Gruul since that's the furthest we have down so far =/)

We are on a shortage of Paladins and normally rogues just get might/kings.
Yeah, I can see salv very useful in all of those fights with adds/threat wipes. (We just did our first attempts on Lootreaver this week and once we get it down I'll definitely be needing salv )


I'm hoping that I've been doing fine from having a tank that can threat well instead of a lack in my part, haha.

Well, okay, on Gruul, I can see not needing salv; your DPS is interrupted enough that it's hard to keep good, tight cycles up. Also, it has been my impression that rogue DPS scales faster than tank threat, so what's true in T4 may not be true in T5 and T6. On uninterrupted sustained fights like Tidewalker and Gorefiend, I have found salvation to be essential.

Okies, excuse my lack of progression then. =/


On a completely different topic, I've always wondered if I've been loosing DPS on my ARs and how to use my AR efficiently because few people specifically talk about it. Normally I end up for one cycle just going 1s/5r/3e.

As an addendum to this, most of the conclusions in the first post apply to what I consider to be "after-T4," referring to the gear and progression level encompassing Karazhan, Gruul, Mag, and world bosses. A rogue at this level would be just about to start in SSC/TK, or might already have killed Void Reaver or Lurker. Gear will mostly consist of Netherblade, Kara epics, rep rewards, heroic epics, and maybe arena 2 weapons.

If someone were still in dungeon blues running heroics, not every fact in the thread would be 100% accurate.

If possible, start AR right after hitting SnD. Assuming a normal cycle of 1s/5r, the goal would be to instead do 1s/5r/5e for one cycle.

I would consider myself ready and capable of competing in t5 instances. I guess as you put it "after-T4". I think the main point is you won't really see some of the points until you are actually in SSC/TK

Thanks, I'll try using that and see how it goes.

Edited this out to merge into one reply.

Patch 2.0 brought in the new Talent Trees for everyone in Vanilla WoW giving us Combat Potency. I was Mutilate specced from then on until I hit the endgame in TBC.

The Sword spec bug did not have that drastic an effect on your DPS. Undesirable, irritating but hardly a deciding factor for speccing away from swords.

Itemisation plays a major factor in how you spec, in this case Arena PvP gear was what made Sword Spec the obvious choice of build and not what was available from PvE content.

The other factor was type of encounter.

There is room for a Retribution Paladin too because they use 'that' aura to give you a 2% increase on all your dmg.

My ideal group would be me, Enhancement Shaman (WF), Warrior (BS), Retridin, BM Hunter.
I get nothing from having any other Rogue in the party, another Warrior the same.
Choice of 2% general increase in DPS + healing from Judgement or 5% crit and the odd healing proc from Imp LotP. I prefer the Paladin in there for some reason.

Even at 2000 DPS, a 2% DPS gain is 40. This is roughly on par with what I get from Leader of the Pack right now at 1400 DPS. Still, I wouldn't mind taking the ret paladin over the feral druid in my ideal group, given that the feral druid doesn't benefit at all from WF, and the ret paladin does.

Regarding not having a second (or third) rogue in there, I understand that other rogues offer nothing to you, but unless you're running a raid with only one rogue, there are going to be other rogues around, and they need a group. I'm willing to venture that it's a far bigger loss of DPS to shove a second rogue into some suboptimal group just so that you can get all the DPS boosts you want.

I would argue against the inclusion of a BM hunter in this melee group. Although I love Ferocious Inspiration as much as anyone else, all the BM hunter is getting here is Battle Shout and Imp Sanc Aura. I was under the impression that BM hunters were preferred for caster groups with shadow priests anyway. If not, I stand corrected.

This is true if you only have one rogue in your raid, but with multiple rogues, the benefit the raid gains from giving them all (at minimum) an Enhancement Shaman and Warrior with Imp BS is going to be better than stacking one super-dps group and leaving the other rogues to slum it up in a leftover group.

In my guild, at least, we usually only raid with one Enhancement Shaman and 2-3 rogues. Usually we toss all three in one group with the Sham and one of the DPS Warrs; if we swapped one of the BM hunters in there, the other four get the bonus from FI, but it's not nearly enough to make up for the other rogue losing BS, UR, and possibly WF.

Salv is definitely very important. This week we somehow managed to pull Najentus without realizing salv was not buffed on most of the raid, and I was riding the tank pretty much the whole fight.

Typically I watch omen and don't start damage till I see the tank has 6-8K threat. I'll open with a 1 or 2 point SnD, then blow everything (haste pot/bf/ar/berserking). I typically have to vanish not long after AR wears off, but I rarely catch back up to the tank unless I'm having an absolutely amazing day.

Well, other than it basically making it do half as much damage as it currently does (on average)...

You're just stubbornly holding onto some notion that daggers really is better and it's just these weird "quirks" that are causing people to go swords when supposedly, everyone really wants to be daggers or something. Swords are numerically (at least at current T4+ raid target levels) superior, and the reasons for it are NOT due to itemization, nor due to encounter types, it's due to game mechanics - they may change in the future (as they have in the past), but CURRENTLY swords are stronger, not by a huge margin, but enough to matter to some people.

I don't think anyone cares about a single rogue's DPS except maybe the rogue, or his raid leader if it sucks - raidwide DPS is so far above personal dps that this statement is just ridiculous.

Well, I think his assertion was that the availability of good, fast OH swords via PvP are making swords stronger than they otherwise might be, which is true. However, you are correct in that this effect is not large enough to matter; even without the availability of PvP weapons, sworrds would be superior. For instance, according the Rogue Gear Spreadsheet: with my current gear and typical raid buffs, I would do as much damage with Talon of Azshara/Latro's as I would with Shard of Azzinoth/Messenger of Fate (the optimal daggers for combat daggers) - even against targets where Murder does not apply. And when one can match the damage output of the best daggers in the game with an early SSC drop and a blue from a non-heroic 5 man, that's a pretty good indicator that daggers are a bit weak right now.

Yes, that was exactly my point.

Also, I want to come clearly out and say that I don't believe that this disparity is "right" or imply that swords are inherently better and should remain that way - I honestly think that when you're talking about deep combat, they should be as close as possible, and I certainly wouldn't begrudge daggers a slight buff to make them closer.

That being said, I honestly can't remember a time when they were closer - I'm pretty sure that by mid-Naxx, your combat dagger builds were more than 5% better than a sword build with an equal gear level. But I'll admit that's just conjecture.

Well, the complication in Naxx was the lack of swords; until one killed Kel'thuzad, there wasn't a single MH sword available that did more than 58.5 DPS, whereas Rag dropped a dagger that did that much and there were 3 viable MH Daggers over 60 DPS in AQ40 and the early parts of Naxx - so it tended to be the case in Naxx that dagger rogues had higher DPS MH weapons than did sword rogues, hence their DPS tends to be higher. My sense is that when you did actually have sword rogues with weapons of comparable quality, the difference was probably of equal magnitude; there was simply an itemization gap that made it appear larger.

I still maintain that offhand sword spec needs to be changed to proc an extra offhand attack. Even if it does, sword spec still scales beyond any other spec once you have high levels of crit and hit. However, changing offhand sword spec will increase the competitiveness of other weapon specs. The primary downside of doing this would be that */sword hybrid specs would lose a lot of their competitiveness. However, without a change like this, sword spec will continue to be far too powerful for its own good, and the only fix would be to make the other specs equally overpowered.

I agree that some way of equalizing the specs is probably needed. The most likely options would seem to be:

1) OH Sword hits proc OH attacks
2) Internal cooldown on Sword Spec (as is true of Windfury Weapon for shamans)
3) Reinstatement of the previous sword spec mechanic, wherein Sword Spec procs reset the MH swing timer.

Any of these would do nicely in bringing the specs back towards balance; the fact that they would nerf hybrid xxx/sword specs is not really that big a deal; they would be replaced with nonhybrid specs. For instance, hybrid fist/sword spec would be replaced with fist/fist spec; instead of using Talon of the Phoenix/Quickblade, you'd use Talon of the Phoenix/Claw of the Phoenix.

The issue that I would be concerned about with such a change is that it would effectively be a blanket rogue nerf; as most raiding rogues are swords right now, this would work out to a 5% reduction in rogue DPS for the majority of raiders. Particularly since the recent rogue nerfs (to Haste Rating, Dragonspine Trophy, Weapon Skill, etc.) I fear that such a change would drop rogues dangerously low in DPS output, to the extent that our value in a raid would be called into question. As such, while I do feel that a weapon specialization rebalancing is needed, I think it also needs to be accompanied with balance tweaks in other areas to help rogues maintain they're value to 25-man raids.

I haven't been able to find any real in depth topic covering this, and maybe they're just Bible and I'm not looking in the right places. But where and how did we establish these values?

What I might be more specifically asking is, what was the testing method to arrive at these figures, how much are these numbers rounded, et cetera. Obviously as the spreadsheets imply, which stat is more valuable depends on where your character is already sitting. But if you were to make a spreadsheet that just broke down every piece of gear, and said Gear(A) is superior to Gear(B) in a vacuum, you have to start with these base numbers.

[edit] Yes I know of the shadow panther website, but even he has 3 different formulas for what exactly AEP is. I'm not claiming the numbers are wrong, I'd just like to look at the formula, especially with the hit cap changing, and see where the formula is. And also because I see a lot of rogues sitting well below the hit cap and doing just fine on DPS.

They were pulled from Aldriana's rogue gear spreadsheet, using as a base an "after-T4" gear set as best I could judge it. To my best satisfaction, the values given for that gear set agree with values given for arbitrary other gear sets a rogue might be found wearing.

If you see a rogue doing well on DPS with well below the hit cap, it is likely because he has gear that is so good even without hit that it doesn't matter. Such gear exists, in large quantities, at the Hyjal/BT gear level.

Is sword spec really over that overpowered though that it would be catastrophic to buff the other two to equality? (well maybe maces in pvp, ouch) It seems like rogues do pretty decent damage in raids these days but would adding more dps be absurdly overpowered?

Also, I mean that as a 'fo reals' question. I stopped raiding in Kara, and my own rogue is only 51 at the moment.

I suppose using the word "overpowered" was a tad inaccurate. If rogue damage falls behind that of classes that bring more than just damage to raids (read: most other classes), then we've got a balance issue. However, there's definitely an issue within the scope of the class itself if the spec with least utility other than in raids doesn't do the most damage (or even tie for the most damage).

I wouldn't mind seeing one or more of the weapon specs changed to 1/2/3/4/5% haste. That would scale much better relative to sword spec.

The difficulty with "buffing the others to match" is the *way* in which Swords are overpowered. The problem is not that swords are too strong in general; on the MH, sword spec is well-balanced against the other two specs; it's a bit weaker than fist at low gear levels, a bit strong at high gear levels, a little worse than mace for PvP, and a bit better than mace for PvE. The problem is that sword spec on the offhand is about 3 times as good as any of the other specs on the offhand. Thus, the naive solution of just bumping fist spec up to 1.5% crit per level doesn't work; all that would do is make fist/sword hybrid spec more powerful, and you still have the fundamental issue that everyone wants to offhand a sword. If it were just a case that "swords in general are too strong", it'd be easy to fix by buffing the others. Since the problem is that "OH Swords are too powerful", it's harder to fix without nerfing sword spec.

Not to belabor this point, but in Gruul I cannot imagine being without salvation. Even with the ground slam / shatter and some awfully solid tanks, I have to vanish during Gruul. With salvation up.

I can only imagine that the guild which doesn't need salvation on rogues has exceptionally good tanks generated exceptionally good threat or rogues not generating the dps they ought to be.

Another "must have salv" fight is Void Reaver.. And really the list of "must have salv" fights is pretty much the vast majority of them if not all of them.

"Mideci vanish now or you're gonna be tanking soon" is not uncommon. And again our tanks are pretty darned solid and I'm hardly the greatest rogue in WoW.

Do daggers scale better with crit or AP?
I read on the nilihum website that daggers should itemize for HIT>CRIT>AP. Why is that true? Or is that a false statement.

In 2.3 maces may no longer be pvp oriented; be thankful all you rogues that already raid with maces (lawl). Blizzard decided that giving mace rogues +10 expertise was too good or not good enough, either way they made mace specialization give 5% increased critical strike damage. With a mace like syphon of nathrezim sinister strike will be insane and not to mention the extra off hand damage. They didnt remove the stun effect so maybe blizz is finally giving rogues a lil of that hot buff ass. Look foward to seeing some charts and whatnot on this.

I can only imagine a mace/sword hybrid with a RED meta gem.

I knew I had forgotten to add something to the first post. According to my preliminary modeling, dual maces will be roughly as good as fists now, and mace/sword hybrid will be slightly behind fist/sword.

According to that rogue's own guide, he does not like theorycraft. Personally, I don't like relying on empirical data. His opinions and those of the majority of the rogues on this forum disagree in several ways, and I would venture that most of ours here are based on solid math, while his are based on intuition and feel (which certainly counts for something, but just being in Nihilum doesn't make one right).

I would leave it up to you to decide which to put more stock in. For what it's worth, I don't believe the weighting of stats changes very much between daggers and swords, though if I'm wrong hopefully someone will correct me here.

The word you are looking for but overlooked is ideal and the group setup is my personal choice for reasons other than just DPS. My ideal for my personal DPS and survivability, not the optimum for the Raid.

The healing from Judgement of Light (?) in certain encounters, Hydross in either Phase, Lurker etc, is significant and frees healers up from having to constantly watch over melee. It does not replace it but it makes it easier on them.

Having the melee DPS in one group has other benefits.

2 Rogues, BM Hunter, Warrior, Enhancement Shaman in one group is more convenient in the Raid and means that more advantage is taken of the buffs available.

@Shaker with respect to Sword Spec up to 2.1. The bug only caused the damage caused by OH procs to reset the MH swing, this was not a reduction of DPS by half, it was a reduction of DPS from those OH procs by half, that was not major and not a reason to stay away from sword spec.

Also I am not sticking to the belief that Combat Daggers is better. I have not been saying that either. What I have been saying is that IF the only weapons we had available were from PvE then Daggers would not be at the disadvantage it is currently at.
Sword itemisation compared to Dagger itemisation until MH/BT in PvE stinks.
Fist is worse until SSC and Maces, well Mace Spec in a Raid is fine until the mobs are stunnable. I will resist a rant on that subject.

The word "overpowered" has been used together with Sword Spec. As other have said this is an exaggeration. I think Sword Spec, in terms of DPS, is where the other specs -should- be with the exception of Mace Spec. Must.. resist.. the... rant: Mace Spec has no place in Raids, stunned mobs are a pain for the tanks to have to deal with.

Having Sword Spec cause procs to cause an extra swing for the weapon that procced would balance things out.

I would -love- to see Opportunity changed to give Haste at 1/2/3/4/5% and have the dmg buff built into the skills that are currently buffed by it. Oh and dump Aggression, make Vitality more effective.

In terms of playability -every- other usual build is better than combat daggers. Well possibly not Shadowstep. It is the playability aspect which is why I am going Combat Swords. I must be too old to have grasped this earlier. Mind you I was seduced by Mutilate, Blizzard have dropped the ball on that Talent so no point crying over spilled milk.

Are you making the argument that Blizzard purposefully stunted sword itemization as a design decision to reign in sword spec?

I understand the concept of an "ideal" group, but your ideal group doesn't really have a purpose in discussion if it has nothing to do with reality. I would define "ideal" as the group I would put together in an actual raid, with the success of the raid in mind, if I had all the parts available to do it. Also, I don't understand why you would say "having the melee DPS in one group has other benefits" (on which I don't disagree) and then shove a BM hunter in the group. Finally, last nitpick, Judgment of Light is usable and affects you whether the ret paladin is in your group or not. However, as I said, I wouldn't mind trading the feral druid for the paladin at all.

Yes, and this is what Shaker is trying to tell you simply isn't correct. Itemization doesn't have the least bit to do with it. Go ahead and whip out your copy of Aldriana's gear spreadsheet, and do the following comparison: [Vindicator's Brand]+[Latro's Shifting Sword] vs. [Shard of Azzinoth]+[Messenger of Fate]. Make sure you plug in the appropriate respective talent builds. How much does the Hyjal/BT dagger combination come out on top of the pre-raiding swords? Therein lies your problem.

I venture that this would be an overall negative change, because it would essentially force every build to spec 5 points into Subtlety, instead of just combat dagger builds. It's that reliance on Subtlety that needs to be broken, so combat daggers can get the same 20/41 or variant that everyone else gets.

Would someone mind explaining to me why mace/sword hybrids will be slightly behind fist/sword in terms of dps since both mace and fist specializations give the same bonuses (5% crit) in 2.3?

Unless i am totally mistaken, Fist-Spec gives overall +5% crit to all attacks in contrary to the Mace-Spec giving you 5% increased damage to all your crits.

Silly me.. should've read the changes to mace spec carefully

Nah it doesnt defeat any purpose since its a great sourch for dagger rogues aswell.

Ty Vulajin for all the work btw!

Such things do have a very valid place in a discussion about what you would do in reality.
It allows you to see what make up produces the best results for a given objective.

You can use what you learn from that to make up groups in a Raid because you know how the buffs interact with the members of the party.

I also made no mention of being in a Raid or having to account for raid efficiency.

Too much was being read into what I typed, all the things about "raid", "best for raid" etc came from others. I try to keep what I say simple, add no hidden meaning and I try not to require that the reader has to make assumptions.

I shove the BM Hunter in the "melee group" because if the pet is not a caster then it will be doing melee and be buffing the party doing that. With all due respect to Hunters I am only interested in his pet in my Party, the owner is literally secondary to my needs.
Call it an ideosynchracy of mine if you will.
Hey, I am not disputing that Swords is better than Daggers.
I see the results in reality, where the metal meets the meat, to be different. If I were doing less dmg with my gear (Malchazeen, Heroic Dagger) than a Vindicator/Latros equipped Rogue I would be tearing my hair out.
If I were not doing significantly more dmg I would be looking for what I was doing wrong.
The spreadsheet, any spreadsheet, gives approximate results under ideal conditions.
While it is a guide it is not a reflection of what happens in practice.
As you said about my ideal group, it is not what happens in practice.

I would be horrified if the state of play in the game was actually that shown by the spreadsheet. I don't think it is either, mainly because my own experience tells me that it isn't.
Fact is that itemization -does- play a role and I do contend that Blizzard use itemisation as a tool to balance things out.
There is very strong evidence of this in every patch note where they change item stats.
They didn't just drop the ball on this, they kicked it out of the stadium too.
It would not force every build to spec it, there is no need for Combat to do so.
The effect of 5% haste would not be greater than 5/5 Lethality (which is what would be dropped).
It would remove the need for any combat build to spec Sub at all, Sub Rogues would get a meaningful boost however.

Edit: Just to make this perfectly clear. It is obvious that both the mechanics of the Sword Spec Combat Build and itemisation give Combat Sword a clear advantage over any other Rogue build both in terms of DPS and in terms of playability. I am in total agreement with you on this.
My point about itemisation as far as Arena gear is concerned is that it has dramatically widened the gap and done it much earlier. Without this then things would not be as bad as they are now.

As far as the OP is concerned:
1- both theory and practice show that in order to maximise your DPS you should start with a Combat Swords build and equip a Rogue thus specced accordingly.
2- It is advisable to use Arena PvP as a way of improving your weapons to at least SSC/TK:TE standard or better.

I just tested this on the PTR and you're right. Surprise Attacks stacks additive for both Opportunity and Aggression. I'm going to update my formulas.

By the way, the wolves in this starting area have 20 armor (level 1) resp. 21 armor (level 2) (checked with a hunter). Sometimes this *does* reduce your damage range, although only by 1 (and only if your minimum damage is only slightly above a natural number, so that this 0.189% damage reduction bring it down to a smaller natural number).

The formulas are:

Backstab with Opportunity
( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) * 1.5 + 255 ) * 1.2

Backstab without Opportunity, but with Surprise Attacks
( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) * 1.5 + 255 ) * (1 + 0.1)

With Opportunity and Surprise Attacks
( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*1.7)) * 1.5 + 255 ) * (1.2 + 0.1)


Sinister Strike with Aggression
( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*2.4)) + 98 ) * 1.06

Sinister Strike without Aggression, but with Surprise Attacks
( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*2.4)) + 98 ) * (1 + 0.1)

Sinister Strike with Aggression and Surprise Attacks
( (DAMAGE+(AP/14*2.4)) + 98 ) * (1.06 + 0.1)

I don't think this is a productive discussion anymore, but I'd just like to conclude by reiterating that I am not at all in agreement with your point about itemization. Comparing any pair of daggers at a given itemization level against any pair of swords, the swords will always come out on top by a significant margin. Neither has arena gear widened the gap, as you can carry out the same comparison with PvE gear and obtain the same results. The two changes that really did it were making offhand sword spec procs cause main hand swings, and introducing a large amount of hit gear (enabling rogues to approach and even reach the cap) in BC.

(edit) I just noticed how contradictory this post of mine is. What I wanted to get at was that it's not weapon itemization itself responsible for the issue, as I believe you are arguing.

I think everyone else handled all the other parts of your post, but you're forgetting mainhand special attacks that trigger sword spec as well. Your opinion that it was not a major difference is different than mine, but I'm not really willing to go into it, since I think this thread has enough of non-math discussion on completely outdated topics (I am not simply blaming you for that - my posts aren't exactly numbers-laden either).

As for the attitude of "Well that's just theorycraft", I will say that I think you're really posting in the wrong thread if every disagreement is going to come down to that - that's why we're here. Several people have made calculations in "non-ideal" conditions, but there isn't much call for spreadsheets that deal with "optimum gear selections for the Gruul Encounter" - we have to choose something to generally agree with, and while we ALL realize that the tank & spank fights are limited in BC - the principles used in analyzing those fights are useful when engaged in any fight.

I've found in the gear spreadsheet that the weighting of hit rating versus agility is extremely dependent on just one item. With my T4-5 gear but no Dragonspine Trophy hit rating is worth just slightly less than agility (2.09 AP for hit rating versus 2.11 AP for agility). Add in the DST and the relative worth flips (2.18 AP for hit rating versus 2.13 for agility). I wear two proc trinkets (WSC and RPV) and have combat potency, but without the DST the sheet never weighs hit rating over agility.

When I discuss the value of hit rating with my guild rogues I always put a caveat on pushing hit rating and the hit cap - it's much more important if you have the DST. If not, then either hit rating or agility are good choices.

A fair point. I'll add such a caveat to the first post.

For anyone reading who has maces and an RED, I'm looking (and I'm sure many other people are as well) for a kind soul to get on the PTR and test out the new mace spec to see how it functions with RED.

To make the point a bit more fundamental: the more powerful procs you have, the more hit is worth. Dragonspine, being a powerful proc, tends to push up the value; however, it's not the only thing. Combat Potency, Mongoose/Executioner, Windfury, etc. all increase the value of hit by nontrivial amounts. The more of these you have, the more hit is worth.

"Hey, I am not disputing that Swords is better than Daggers.
I see the results in reality, where the metal meets the meat, to be different. If I were doing less dmg with my gear (Malchazeen, Heroic Dagger) than a Vindicator/Latros equipped Rogue I would be tearing my hair out."

Maybe EJ should ban these kinds of statements? As is often the guy, a guy is generalizing from his own personal experience in a theorycrafting thread. He's wrong. The differences he is seeing are based on his skill vs. someone else. There are thousands of post in the other threads backing up the actual math that proves the superiority of swords over daggers. And he says but in the real world daggers are better.

The "reality" of which he speaks is solely himself vs. someone else he knows (or a couple of people, however many rogues he raids with). It serves as some kind of counter-illumination to have these "but I know my personal setup is better" posts when the opposite has been proved.

The forum bans signing of posts, perhaps it's time for no more I'm-sure-it's-true-even-though-it-isn't posts? Anyway, not my forums, but just a thought.

Well because poisons are considered Nature (not Physical) damage, it's fair to assume that they fall victim to the same level-based resistance rules as spells. 2 points in Master Poisoner decreases the 17% resist rate of a level 73 mob to 7%.

I think most people skip it because there are 41 better talent points in the Assassination tree if you plan to use Mutilate. Poisons contribute nicely to your damage, but they're not the hinge of your performance. A resist or two is nothing to nothing to quibble about when avoiding them would cost you valuable points like Quick Recovery, Fleet Footed, or something in your 20-talent support tree.

I have to pipe in on this one.

You will be missing so many "% chance" talent procs (energy, etc.) going with this 1s/3r rotation.

As I recall hearing someone say long ago, "It's better to know what you aren't getting than what you are." If that's not an exact quote, I reserve all rights to copyright it.

What are you talking about? 1s/3r keeps 100% SnD uptime - I'm assuming (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that you're stating that 1s/3r is dropping SnD.

Relentless Strikes maybe?

I don't think this is entirely correct. Let's look at those talents individually.

ruthlessness: 60% chance to get another combo point with a finisher. The value of this talent degrades linearally with the number of combo points that you build. If you always do 1 cp finishers, than each combo point is always worth an extra 0.6 combo points. if you always do 5 cp finishers, than each combo point is always worth an extra 0.12 combo points. So the fewer combo points you build before using a finisher, the greater effect you get from ruthlessness.

relentless strikes: 20% chance per combo point to regain 25 energy when landing a finisher. This scales linearly with the number of combo points that you acquire before using a finisher. 1 cp is 20%, 5 cp is 100%. So it doesn't matter if you do 1 cp finishers, 3 cp finishers, or 5 cp finishers.. you'll get the same amount of bonus energy per cp.

Let's take an example of 20 combo points:

Scenario 1: 20 combo points built, finisher used every 5 cp, so 4 finishers. Ruthlessness will give you an extra 2.4 combo points and relentless strikes will give you 4 guaranteed procs for 100 energy.

Scenario 2: 20 combo points built, finisher used every 2 cp, so 10 finishers. Ruthlessness will give you an extra 6 combo points and relentless strikes will have 10 chances at 40% each of returning 25 energy... 10 * .4 * 25 = 100 energy.

It's correct to say that the energy gains from relentless strikes are more _consistent_ with 5 cp than with less than 5 cp.. but the energy gained over the course of the fight per combo point is unchanged.

A 1s/3r rotation gains more from ruthlessness and the same from relentless strikes as compared to 1s/5r... 1s/5r is simply more consistent with regard to the energy return from relentless strikes.

Rogue Combat talent Aggression now applies its 2/4/6% bonus to Backstab. This is in addition to the previous effects of 2/4/6% increased damage on Sinister Strike and Eviscerate.



- Shadowstep reduced to 30 second cooldown. 8-25 yd range. Changed from 20 yard. (previously no min range) Also adds +20% damage to any special on next attack.

- Hemorrhage debuffed increased from 10 to 36. Now lasts 10 charges or 15 seconds.


Goodbye, nerves of steel and 2/2 endurance, hello Aggression. This is a nice step toward a needed buff for combat daggers and I'm GLAD it didn't involve nerfing swords.

Subtley is also becomming more viable for pve and pvp purposes

Let me tell you my 'realcraft' experiences, then.

On my old server, in my old guild, we ran with 2 rogues for 25 man raids. Both of us started out as daggers. Our gear was very close. So was our position on the meters; we took the top 2 slots on most fights and it was a tossup which one of us took #1 on any particular day.

When Arena Season 2 came around, we decided to test swords vs. daggers by having me stay daggers and my guildmate go swords, in part because he was in a better arena team situation and could buy a set of S2 swords right away.

Result: I started losing the damage meter battles by a wide margin. Even after I completed my S2 dagger set (bringing our gear back to near parity) it still wasn't close. The only times I ever beat him were on low-armor bosses during the short period of time when I had Warp-Spring Coil and he didn't.

I'm on a different server now, so I can no longer compare to him, but I did recently get a Talon of Azshara and a S2 OH to replace my S2 MH/OH daggers. The Rogue DPS Spreadsheet predicted about 150 raidbuffed DPS gain from doing this without any other changes to my gear. I can report that it doesn't seem to be horribly wrong in practice; I'm not actually getting quite that much but the set of buffs I have enabled in the spreadsheet is probably a bit optimistic. It's certainly worth at least 100 DPS, which is substantially more than 5% gain for me.

So yes, sword spec really is that good.

Both specializations benefit a great deal from Arena items. The S2 OH dagger is vastly superior to anything you can get before Hyjal, and there's nothing to compete with the S2 MH dagger until Vashj.

I think you may be overestimating the impact of the availability of the Arena OH on swords, too. Consider a thought experiment: All else equal, what is the DPS due to weapon specialization for sword and dagger when changing between a 1 DPS OH and a 1000 DPS OH? Sword spec's contribution stays constant, because SS procs from your OH result in MH swings; changing OH DPS doesn't change sword spec DPS at all. The DPS from dagger spec, on the other hand, changes considerably since the 5% crit scales the DPS of the OH weapon.

So the point of my thought experiment is that sword spec is quite insensitive to OH weapon DPS. If you have to use a Latro's instead of a S2 OH, you only lose out on the raw autoattack OH DPS -- about 26 * 0.75, modified by crit etc. Latro's happens to have excellent DPS stats, probably better overall than the DPS stats on the S2 OH sword. It's also 0.1 faster than the Arena OH, and that means even more for sword spec than it would for dagger spec. Thus, Latro's is surprisingly competitive with the Arena S2 OH. Not as good, but not a disaster either.

I'm afraid, then, that you are going to have to be horrified. If you're beating a Vindicator/Latro's rogue, it's because that rogue isn't up to your standard in some regard (gearing choices, talent choices, player skill). Like I said above, I've seen two of the best real world scenarios to verify what the theorycraft says: both comparison between two closely matched rogues and personal experience switching from daggers to swords.

I think nobody would disagree that the Rogue DPS spreadsheet can't predict exact outcomes. (At one time pre-TBC it came close, but it really ought to be a Monte Carlo simulator these days to accurately model the interactions between haste procs, combat potency, cycles, etc. The game's too complicated now to model in a straightforward way with a spreadsheet.) But you seem to want to have it both ways: anything that's useful as a guide obviously does reflect what happens in practice to some extent, no?

Personally, I've had great success using it as a relative ranking tool. That is, if you set up your gear, talents, race, and buffs, save the DPS you get from that setup, then start playing with the options available to you, it's quite good at predicting whether your dps will go up or down, and even at predicting the relative value of different gear upgrade options. Do I rely on it as much to tell me whether spec A is better than spec B? No, but it's at least close, and when it predicts a huge difference between one spec and another, I'd take it seriously if I were you. People have done a lot of work on it to make it reflect reality as closely as possible.

I'd dispute this to some extent; while it's certainly harder to model things in a spreadsheet than it was before, it's certainly still possible; for everything but deep-Assassination builds, I'm confident that the Rogue Gear Spreadsheet is as accurate as any Monte Carlo method. And even high-end Assassination *could* be modeled with it - I just haven't bothered, since it is fairly challenging and not really that worthwhile.

Here's the thing, though. Over a given period of time, you generate a certain amount of energy from base energy regeneration, and you also generate a certain amount from Combat Potency if applicable. Both of these effects, we will assume to be independent of cycles (as they largely are).

Now let's say you gain 5 energy back on every single combo point generator you perform (let's use Sinister Strike as an example). Let's assume only the base energy regeneration of 10/s (if there were Combat Potency, it would apply equally to both cycles):

Running 1s/5r
Sinister Strikes used: 6
Finishers used: 2
Total energy spent per cycle: 40 * 6 + 25 * 2 = 290
Total energy back from Relentless Strikes: 6 * 5 = 30
Net energy spent: 260
Sinister Strike energy spent: 240
% energy spent on Sinister Strike: 92.31%
Cycle duration: 260 / 10 = 26s
Relentless Strikes energy/s: 30 / 26 = 1.15

Running 5s/5r
Sinister Strikes used: 10
Finishers used: 2
Total energy spent per cycle: 40 * 10 + 25 * 2 = 450
Total energy back from Relentless Strikes: 10 * 5 = 50
Net energy spent: 400
Sinister Strike energy spent: 400
% energy spent on Sinister Strike: 100%
Cycle duration: 400 / 10 = 40s
Relentless Strikes energy/s: 1.25

So not only does the cycle with higher-CP finishers use more of its energy, on average, on Sinister Strikes (thereby increasing Sinister Strike DPS), it also obtains higher energy output per time from Relentless Strikes. The effect, thus, does depend quite heavily on the cycle you run.

This topic has helped out my rogue nicely, thanks.

One question though - I plan on making a mace/hemo build given the changes to 2.3. Does the hemo calculation treat your main hand weapon as .3 quicker with SnD on? Or is it the static 2.6-2.8 given with the base weapon speed?

It's based on your tooltip weapon speed.

I spent some time over the weekend taking a closer look at what the Spreadsheet is telling me and what an event driven model I have been knocking together is telling me as well.

I must admit I have completely underestimated Sword Spec. By rights a Vindicator/Latros rogue shouldn't just be close behind me I in fact should be trailing them on dmg.

This is good news for me, it shows that at least 3 rogues in the world are worse than I am

Reading this and other threads about DPS cycles:
I am specced Combat Daggers with 3/3 Ruthlessness and Relentless Strikes.

Two questions then.

I am running 1s/3r comfortably but is this the best cycle to be going for in Raids?
The other option is 1s/3s/5r.

Quite often this can stretch to a 1s/4r but that often means a short gap in SnD which many say is anathema. Is it wise to stretch a combo that far? (the gaps are somewhere in the region of 2 seconds)?
Edit: My second question arises out of the fact that Aldrianna's spreadsheet is saying my Approximate Cycle is 1s/3.7r

mutilate off hand weapon = Vengeful Gladiator's Mutilator - Items - World of Warcraft

You do not want to let SnD drop, ever. Hence, the ideal solution is to watch your SnD uptime carefully and do 1s4r when you can and 1s3r if you can tell that that will give you an SnD gap. If you are having trouble with that, it is better to just do 1s3r than to have SnD gaps.

First up thanks Vulajin for this thread, I've found it extremely useful in helping to plan future upgrades/compare pieces of gear =)

I apologise if this has come up elsewhere but I've been reading conflicting views on the value of different trinkets for Rogues after the haste nerf in 2.2

Pre-2.2 DST was the best by a fair margin but after the changes in calculating haste rating --> haste % I've noticed some rogues preferring to go for the combination of Warp-Spring Coil and Tsunami Talisman (and later Madness of the Betrayer) as opposed to using Dragonspine in one of those slots, are there any post 2.2 calculations on this to back up one side or the other? Also what would be the better option between Warp-Spring Coil and Tsunami Talisman assuming neither would put me above the hit cap?

Sorry if I've posted in the wrong format, first time posting on EJ ^_^

According to the Rogue Gear Spreadsheet, DST is still the best trinket. What's number 2 depends on your spec and gear to some extent, but generally the answer is either Ashtongue Talisman of Lethality, Madness of the Betrayer, or Warp Spring Coil. Tsunami Talisman, while certainly better than the pre-raid trinkets, is on the whole inferior to these 4.

Cheers for clearing that up for me =), hope to replace the Abacus with a Warp-Spring Coil soon if Void Reaver would hurry up and drop another one after close to 3 months+ of downing him every week ><.

I wonder, has anyone researched or modeled effects of crit over hit for Mutilate builds?
Seeing how Vashj has been very uncooperative in regards of the belt I was starting to consider Don Alejandro's over my current Belt of Deep Shadows.
Common sense tells me that Deep Shadows is superior (dps wise), but I began wondering if crit might be better for Mutilate due to it's "2" attack nature, or where the cut-off point would be?

From what I understand Mutilate is a two-roll (or is it rather one+two roll system?)
First to check if the attack lands and two "secondary" rolls to check if the attacks are either crits or hits.

Assuming that the only "procs" are Mongoose (WSC+Lethality in my case. DST or MoB would alter the results somewhat I assume) would mean that hit isn't that valued.
So I'm throwing it out here as a idea.



As for the overall mutilate aspect. I'd have to disagree. The suggested spec assumes the usage of dual DP that is highly unlikely as WF is much better (at least with a warrior in the group). Even in case of GoA I would use IP over dual deadly.
I personally use: this build.
Even without Imp. Poisons I rarely find DP falling off and Fleet Footed allows Dexterity or Surefooted enchant.
As I mentioned above, for mutilate hit isn't as important so I prefer Crimson Spinels over Pyrestone/Lionseye where possible.

As far as my understanding goes, first it is determined wether Mutilate hits at all, so 1 roll for dodge, parry (in dead zone or lag situations) and miss. This roll counts for both main hand and off hand. You won't see any missed main hand Mutilate but a landed off hand Mutilate (however, you will see a main hand mutilate hit and no off hand Mutilate at all if the target is already dead after the main hand hit).
Then for each hand there is another roll to determine wether it's a hit or a crit.

This is exactly what I am doing right now but being a little slack about SnD gaps that do creep in. Erring on the side of caution is what I will do from now on.

I have an additional question about the 4 set T4 bonus, 15% chance of being awarded a combo point when a Finisher is used.

I need to furnish proof about this with a combat log ofc but I got the impression I was sometimes getting 2 CPs awarded when using a finisher, 1 from Ruthlessness and 1 from somewhere else (presumably T4). I have no other talents or items which could account for this.

Now I assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the T4 bonus would stack with Ruthlessness but if I wasn't suffering hallucinations then this is not the case.
Is this in fact how it works, the 4 set T4 bonus I mean?

Well say you get airbursted on archimonde with 4cp, usually i then ss-->rup. Do you mean a 4pt snd there would be better?

I would just like to hear more opinions on this. The last I checked on shadowpanther.net, this item is ranked pretty high as a good PVE helm, probably comparable or better then X-11 engineering crafted helm or Deathmantle helm. I have access to Epic gems and Im planning to socket this with 2 Glinting Pyrestones and 1 Rigid Lionseye. Im currently using the X-11 engineering crafted goggles with RED. Am I making a good choice?

Well, to my calculations they are pretty close... if you value the +3% increased critical strike damage for 26 ApEP then they are identical. Probably shadowpanther undervalues the meta socket

Always be careful with the word "stacking," it can mean a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts. In the case of T4 4pc, it has its own chance to proc, independent of Ruthlessness, which means that you can in fact end up with 2 CP from a finisher. The chance of getting 2 CP is equal to 60% * 15% = 9%. The chance of getting 1 CP is equal to 60% * 85% + 40% * 15% = 57%. The chance of getting 0 CP is equal to 40% * 85% = 34%.

If you average out the number of CP gained on a finisher when you have both Ruthlessness and T4 4pc, it comes out to 0.75.

Well, using the weighting system given in the first post and assuming Hyjal gems, Grimgin is worth 40 * 2.2 + 24 * 2.3 + 82 + 23 * 3 = 294.2 (+8 if you socket for the bonus). Netherblade Facemask is worth 28 * 2.2 + 14 * 2.3 + 78 + 23 = 194.8 (+8.8 if you socket for the bonus). So the question is how high you rate Relentless Earthstorm Diamond. Aldriana's sheet puts it at roughly 93.66 AP, meaning that Netherblade is right on par with Grimgrin. This would make Grimgrin inferior to Deathblow and Deathmantle.

Thanks for checking my facts. Next time I update the first post, I'll fix that.

Originally posted by Vulajin
Well, using the weighting system given in the first post and assuming Hyjal gems, Grimgin is worth 40 * 2.2 + 24 * 2.3 + 82 + 23 * 3 = 294.2 (+8 if you socket for the bonus). Netherblade Facemask is worth 28 * 2.2 + 14 * 2.3 + 78 + 23 = 194.8 (+8.8 if you socket for the bonus). So the question is how high you rate Relentless Earthstorm Diamond. Aldriana's sheet puts it at roughly 93.66 AP, meaning that Netherblade is right on par with Grimgrin. This would make Grimgrin inferior to Deathblow and Deathmantle.

I am in a dilemma on this decision because although RED is hard to give up on, the fact that I have to socket 2 blue gems to fulfill its requirement makes me feel as though it cancels out its advantage. Losing 10 hit for 16 stam hurts.

Again, using Aldriana's weighting, you're looking at a meta gem that grants over 90 AP, versus losing 10 hit (which would be about 23 AP worth). RED is huge, make no mistake. Additionally, you can use your two blue gems to activate socket bonuses that you wouldn't otherwise have gotten, lessening the impact of the 10 hit loss.

For what it's worth, Shadowpanther uses a fairly crude raiding system that is a fine "first pass" but not a mathematically correct dps tool. The Rogue Gear and Rogue DPS Spreadsheets take out the opinion quotient and actually measure the worth of a meta-socketed RED or hit or whatnot. They thus gain a level of accuracy the shadowpanther tables don't have.

Thanks for the valuable input guys. Really appreciate it!!

A spec i've never seen mentioned before but I tried out tonight on gruuls was 30/31 seal fate/adrenaline rush. I used this spec. My dps was lower than combat swords, but that was with 5 16ap gems a 20ap gem and a 8 hit gem, if those were all changed to crit gems or more of a dagger 30/31 build was used... I don't think it'd be that bad of a build.

Dont think Sealfate can keep up with Combat Potency toe to toe. Cold blood aint that much substained damage either. QR is nice and all but I would still go full combat instead.

Vulajin,

I would like to understand a little be more on the mechanics of expertise. I've been told that dpsing from behind a raid boss, that you can get dodged and thus the significance of this stat. But, I can't really recall if I have in fact seen a dodge from dpsing behind a target, so I'd like to verify the validity of that statement. Given, that if you cannot be dodged from behind the target this would infer that you are at 0% dodge, and x% miss depending only on your hit rating. Would that make expertise be more meaningful only in situations where you may be moving all around your target and dpsing from the front a good amount of the time? While I'm sure there is already some preliminary number crunching going on the ptr regarding this change, is there an AP equivalency for it at this point? How can I quantify using hit vs. expertise when stat weighing gear in this case? Might I wear a set of gear that includes some expertise up to the cap for a fight that moves around alot and only gear that favors hit when doing simple tank and spank?

Also, in regards to armor reduction or penatration, implicitly, you cannot reduce a targets armor mitigation below 0%, so is there a magic number on how much you should keep in mind if you were to use this stat to your advantage?

Thank you in advance, and I appologize if these questions sound ignorant.

Both white and yellow attacks can be dodged by bosses when you attack from behind.
There are no parries or blocks when attacking from behind.
Attacks from the front can be parried, this resets boss swingtimer increasing dps on tank.

I'm sure you have also experienced doing a rupture on a boss yet you still have all your combopoints. Then you do 1-2 more ss before noticing it, fucking up the cycle and wasting cps and so on... Dodge of DOOM!

Armorlevels varies, so theres not ONE magical number of armorpenetration that acts as a CAP. Believe theres a thread on boss armorvalues, there you can subtract your common armordebuffs on a target, then subtract whatever armorpenetration you have on your gear and youll see if you go below 0.

Combat rogues shouldn't be worried about the rupture being dodged. Surprise Attacks!

Looking at this, and after spending a decent amount of time using the above formulas, I've grown to question them. I know a lot of the AtkEP formulas and AEP formulas vary, but for these, is your "1 Hit Rating = 2.3 AP" factor in Combat Potency? Also, is "1 Crit Rating = 1.6 AP" derived from using RED?


Few Questions for the crowd:
I've grown very accustomed to constantly viewing this thread for updates. One thing that you haven't touched on is Poisons. I know that DP is approx 45 DPS when fully applied. I've heard that IP is best for your MH, assuming you do not have a Shaman in your group to give WF. Has anyone really done the math on Sharpening Stones vs IP for MH. I'm sure its been done, but can't seem to locate exact numbers anywhere (I do realize that the SS should vary depending on gear, AP, RED, and other factors, vs IP which will/should be constant).

At several times I've been tempted to remove those weightings entirely, as I've found that too much confusion arises from them, and they can vary quite a lot with your spec and gear level. Anyone who would like to comment on whether that would be a good idea is welcome to do so.

To answer the questions you've posed, yes, a standard combat build including Combat Potency was used to derive those weights, as well as a Netherblade Facemask socketed with Relentless Earthstorm Diamond. These conditions would hold for most raiding rogues (at least at or past Kara level).

I think that the weightings are very helpful to most raiding rogues b/c your target audience is typically going to be kara geared and spec'd combat. Before reading this post I was stuck on simply obtaining gear that would only help me reach the hit cap, passing on gear that was potentially a huge upgrade to me. After taking advice from this post and using this weighting system, I have found a significant upgrade to my own performance in raids and really appreciate what you have done. As long as ppl understand that these findings are based upon certain assumptions, there really shouldn't be any confusion here. Thanks for your hard work.

I suggest just putting in a note in the original post stating that they were derived from Aldriana's spreadsheet and the spec you used.

Is this sufficient (note: it was already there, but apparently people keep overlooking it, so maybe more is needed)?

I noticed it there, but to me it didn't give enough detail. I assumed it was combat and took factors of a full combat build including combat potency, but I was more interested in the crit number. I have been using 1.55 instead of 1.6 because I don't have a RED (using Maelific), which I believe is correct without RED (trying to backtrack your math).

I love this thread and the boards here. I was daunted by the prospect of a "DPS Spreadsheet" but it's awesome. With all that out of the way...

I'm wondering if a certain section could be added (if it's needed, however brief) of which builds aim for which stats.

I know we all want high AP, Hit, and Crit to a degree, but Mutilate (for example) would probably put more emphasis on crit than a different stat. I'm combat daggers for a change of pace from maces, and trying to figure out how much a backstab is affected by each stat in general... we have so much crit built into our backstabs through talents; would I be off the mark to aim for AP gear in that sense? My mace (Dragonmaw) procced haste, and I went a little overboard stacking other haste items (SSD, Crystalweave Cape), just because i loved seeing that MH speed pushed further and further down (SnD, Blade Flurry, Mongoose, Dragonmaw, Abacus, etc).

A simple paragraph on good ratios to aim for for vaying builds would be the only thing I can think that's missing from the thread.

<3

I don't believe the weighings actually change as much as many think. People forget that one of the main reasons hit rating is better than crit rating is that it takes 10*82/52 for 1% hit and 14*82/52 for 1% crit. This makes hit seeded 1.4 times better than crit before you take into account Combat Potency or anything else. If you look at the weighings: 1.6 * 1.4 = 2.24 which is very close to the 2.3 factor of hit rating.

So, a mutilate build without Combat Potency may tip the scales a little, but I'd venture to guess the weighing won't change more than say 0.2 one way or another, especially since all rogue builds rely on a significant portion of white damage. The same would apply to haste which even without Combat Potency, has a significant effect on one's white damage (where its giving its greatest benefit).

I especially like the weapon comparisons under the 2.3 Preliminary Info section.

Would it be a good idea to flush this out a bit more such as including comparison information down to weapons like Spiteblade, Blinkstrike or even a top level blue item?

I would rather the section didn't become any more bloated than it already is. Also, as per the information in the Weapon Selection and Talent Builds section, the general strategy is to pick the highest DPS weapon within the "slow" speed range. If a rogue has trouble figuring out what order to rank [Heartless], [Spiteblade], and [Blinkstrike], then this thread's probably not going to be enough help for him.

(edit) Also, my apologies for lacking updates on this lately. I just became a raid leader in my guild this past Sunday, so it's been a tough week. Some more stuff will be incoming over the next couple hours.

It may be worthwhile to note the existence of [Shifting Tanzanite] as it is the best dps blue gem in the game.

Apparently it is a somewhat rare drop from the bosses in heroic SV, they haven't been cooperating with me as of this point.

Thanks for reminding me, it has been linked before in this thread and I just completely forgot about it.

It might be worth noting in your raid buffs / totems section that shamans can keep both Windfury and Grace of Air (or Tranquil Air) buffs active at the same time. Windfury + Grace of Air will be superior to Grace of Air + Instant Poison. This "twisting" of totems is somewhat mana intensive, but not difficult, and is extremely useful in short DPS or threat-sensitive fights.

Grace of Air doesn't effect weapons at all. So You can have Instant/Deadly+Grace if you are not using windfury. Not quite sure what you are talking about in that above post honestly.

It is possible to "twist" Windfury and Grace of Air totems, dropping both of them in alternation, thus granting your party the effects of both totems. You can have WF+DP and GoA simultaneously by doing that, instead of GoA and IP+DP.

The Windfury totem buff can be maintained simultaneously with the Grace of Air totem buff by a shaman. Therefore the argument between using Windfury vs. Grace of Air + Instant Poison is not exactly accurate. The argument becomes using Windfury + Grace of Air vs. Instant Poison + Grace of Air, and I'm quite confident that Windfury > Instant Poison. My enhancement shaman regularly keeps both Windfury and Grace of Air active for our melee group.

It will also be a footnote in the theorycraft history books come 2.3.

Blizzard has said they don't really care too much about this so called "totem twisting". I wouldn't read 'they're gonna change it' from that, but maybe they will.

On the other hand, it's such a waste of time and mana on the shamans part that I REALLY think you'd be hard pressed to find a shaman interested in doing this. They need to be continuously throwing totems down, and can't really do anything else effectively at that same time (heal or DPS).

It's only really a proof on concept; hardly applicable in a raid.

They've said that it's definitely unintended, that the only reason it's not been removed already is for technical reasons, and that they're actively looking into ways to fix it. No ETA on the fix though.

Sounds for me as if they didnt want to go the sledge hammer way this time, which simply would have been "10 second cooldown on <element> totem after last cast".

I have a question. So I was thinking of lvling a rogue alt. I know aat the T5+ levle of gear swords become better than daggers. At the lvl 70 blues/kara lvl of gear, are swords still better than daggers, or are daggers better untill you get better gear?

I think part of the confusion on the derived numbers may be the surface inconsistency in them. Even looking at Aldriana's thread, I am still a little confused as to how exactly these work out. For example:

1agi = 2aep
1cr = 1.6 aep

Trying to reconcile that:

1agi = (AP from agi) + (Crit rating from agi * 1.6)
1agi = (1) + ( (22.077/40) *1.6)
1agi = 1 + .883 = 1.883

It looks like Aldriana assumed vitality, but even then:
1agi = (1.02) + (.883 * 1.02) = 1.92

So, I am left wondering how exactly 1agi is worth 2aep within this system. So maybe a quick summary in the same place as the displayed numbers explaining how the base values were derived might help.

The conversions assume whatever talents and buffs you have selected in the sheet; thus, if you have Vitality, it assumes Vitality. And, more to the point, if you select Kings, it uses Kings. Since Kings is relatively common in 25-man raids, this is generally a sensible thing to factor in.

I assumed as much for your sheet (and I do love your sheet, by the way. /end ass kissery). Sorry for the obscurity, I was more directing the post at Vulajin, because I wasn't coming up with something that made those numbers consistent (as he has a separate value for with kings). Rather, I am not seeing exactly what combination of buffs/talents yield those numbers.

Either way, in the context of this thread, if Vulajin is going to keep the rating system there I would suggest that the exact "assumptions" made are included to clear up the confusion surrounding the system.

As of now, the only way I'm seeing agi = 2.0 is with 2/5 sinister calling, and that seems like a poor assumption considering the rest of the assumptions here seem to be biased towards combat rogues.

(with 2/5 sinister calling: 1agi = 1.06 + (22.077/40)*1.6*1.06 = 1.996)

So how about if with the system you choose, Vulajin, you just define the assumed talents and buffs that are active. I think that will go a long way to alleviate the confusion people are finding.

*edit*

For clarity, I am referencing

Stat weighting depends heavily on the stats a character already possesses. The following general guidelines are derived from Aldriana's Rogue Gear Spreadsheet (link in References section) based on a projected pre-SSC/TK level of gear and a combat swords build (though they should apply to most straight combat builds). These guidelines work by comparing the amount of DPS provided by any one stat to the amount of DPS provided by a point of Attack Power:

1 Strength = 1 AP (1.1 with Kings)
1 Agility = 2 AP (2.2 with Kings)
1 Crit Rating = 1.6 AP

And the actual issue is, with a combat swords build, Vitality is the only agi enhancing talent and we still have 1agi = 2AP without kings. This is what is confusing me.

What balance option do you have set? If the sheet isn't set to "Offensive" it will factor in the dodge/armor from agility as well.

This may be true for your raid but our enhancement shaman has no problem twisting totems and contributing a fair portion of DPS. He is not number one but he is not dead last either, and the DPS lost by this one character having to switch air totems every 10 seconds is certainly gained back by the other four melee in his group. We do not do this for every boss.

If totem twisting is going to be disallowed then it is now a mute point; I was only sharing an idea that works well for our raid.

The one thing that changes the most with gear is attack power. As your equipment and weapons get better, the value of attack power goes down. This occurs because increasing one's hit or crit or haste gives percent damage increases, while increasing attack power has diminishing returns as your overall attack power goes up.

For example:
Pre-Kara: Most sheets are going to show the 16 AP gem (out of the standard gems) as best.
Mid-Kara: I ran into a brief moment where the 8 Agility came out on top, but nearly neck-to-neck with 16 AP and 8 Hit.
Late-Post-Kara: 8 Hit gems reign supreme.

Why? Well, when your base AP is only about 1500, 16 AP means quite a bit. Agility is half based on AP (half crit) so some of it scales well, some doesn't. Hit rating being purely a % increase to damage, scales best.

As to the swords vs. daggers, right now swords of the same level are superior to equal daggers at all gear levels because of the superiority of sword specialization.

Where would you put Dragonspine there? I think that Dragonspine by itself pretty much puts 8 hit on top.

Not sure I quite follow. I was under the impression that X Amount of attack power is going to always give you 1 DPS and that's not going to change. This would imply that Attack Power does not scale inversely as the amount of it you have goes up.

On the other hand Crit and Hit (as well as Haste of course) are going to become more valuable with more on-crit abilities (Seal Fate, Hourglass, etc.) and on-hit abilites (Dragonspine Trophy, Poisons, etc.).

I could be wrong here but I always assumed this.

The xAP/14=yDPS only applies to white damage. AP also scales instant attacks and finishers, so the DPS gain is much larger than just one AP.

Can someone point me to the math or testing which supports the rating of 4 Armor Penetration = 1 AP? All I can find is, "that's what the spreadsheet says."

The advantage held by swords is not simply due to sword specialziation, but also do to the much more efficient finisher rotations that all non-backstab specs utilize. The average finisher rotation for sword rogues is in the mid 20 seconds (depending on 2 piece tier 4 or no). The average finishing rotation for c-daggers (3s/5s/5r) takes over a minute. That means that over time your combat sword/fist rogue is keeping rupture up on the target more often, and the increase in rupture dps offsets the DPE advantages of backstab over SS and generates a lead in overall dps.

The single easiest way to 'help combat daggers' is to address the rotation. That could mean cheapening backstab cost leading to more CP, or something else entirely.

I would suggest that we not go down the road of swords vs daggers, as we've already almost had one thread closed due to this debate. However, stated briefly: it is true that daggers get less finisher damage than swords; however, it is also true that backstab is more energy-efficient than Sinister Strike, such that the total damage from Combo Point Generators + Finishers is about the same in both cases. Sword Spec - and in particular OH Sword Spec - is actually the main reason for the superiority of swords these days.

If you would like more information about this, there are any number of posts on it in the Rogue Gear Spreadsheet thread.

The buffs used to derive these values were as follows: Improved Fortitude, Gift of the Wild, Improved Battle Shout, Improved Blessing of Might, Unleashed Rage, Improved Hunter's Mark, Flask of Relentless Assault, Warp Burger, Improved Strength of Earth Totem, Sunder Armor, Faerie Fire, Mangle, Heroism/Bloodlust. MH Windfury, OH Deadly Poison. Blessing of Kings was turned on and off as needed to observe differences based on that.

Gear used was, as given in the first post, a set consisting entirely of gear a pre-SSC/TK rogue could be expected to have. Netherblade Facemask, Choker of Vile Intent, Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless, Netherblade Chestpiece, Shard-bound Bracers, Netherblade Gloves, Girdle of the Deathdealer (I also tried with Gronn-Stitched Girdle and had very similar results), Skulker's Greaves, Edgewalker Longboots, Ring of a Thousand Marks, Violet Signet of the Master Assassin, Dragonspine Trophy (also tried with Abacus of Violent Odds to ensure DST wasn't throwing it off), Bloodlust Brooch, Spiteblade (also tried with Merciless Gladiator's Shanker), Merciless Gladiator's Quickblade (also tried with Merciless Gladiator's Shiv), Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix.

Builds used were standard 19/41+1 combat swords and 15/41/5 combat daggers. Your Armory, in fact, was what reminded me that I never specifically tested with combat daggers, so I will provide the values for that here. Note that a large number of your issues with my numbers stem either from the dagger oversight or from rounding, because I did not want to have all the weights be double-digit decimal. I think I'll change that in the future. (Weights for fists and fist/sword without Kings included for comparison.)

Combat Swords
1 Str = 1 AP (1.1 w/ Kings)
1 Agi = 2.00 AP (2.21 w/ Kings)
1 Crit = 1.74 AP (1.75 w/ Kings)
1 Hit = 2.34 AP (2.37 w/ Kings)
1 ArP = 0.27 AP (0.27 w/ Kings)
1 Haste = 2.01 AP (2.05 w/ Kings)

Combat Daggers
1 Str = 1 AP (1.1 w/ Kings)
1 Agi = 1.96 AP (2.17 w/ Kings)
1 Crit = 1.67 AP (1.69 w/ Kings)
1 Hit = 2.21 AP (2.24 w/ Kings)
1 ArP = 0.30 AP (0.30 w/ Kings)
1 Haste = 2.07 AP (2.11 w/ Kings)

Fist/Sword (no Kings)
1 Str = 1 AP
1 Agi = 1.97 AP
1 Crit = 1.69 AP
1 Hit = 2.21 AP
1 ArP = 0.27 AP
1 Haste = 2.01 AP

Combat Fists (no Kings)
1 Str = 1 AP
1 Agi = 1.96 AP
1 Crit = 1.67 AP
1 Hit = 2.10 AP
1 ArP = 0.27 AP
1 Haste = 2.00 AP

The primary differences between swords and daggers seem to be that agility, crit, and hit are all slightly more valuable with swords, but armor penetration and haste slightly less valuable. Note that the values of agility, crit, hit, armor penetration, and haste will all scale up relative to AP as your gear improves. Also note that fist/sword and fists seem to incorporate the poorer scaling of swords for armor penetration and haste, and the poorer scaling of daggers for agility, crit, and hit.

I'd like to figure out some way to integrate the above information into the first post in a compact manner. Once I do, I'll make the change. And as always, thanks for checking my facts for me. I'm only one guy, I can't get everything perfect on the first shot.

I am just curious how others modify their dps cycle to accommodate AP increasing procs and abilities. Things such as Mongoose, Unleashed Rage, Tsunami Talisman, Hourglass of the Unraveller, etc. I often find myself unable to reapply rupture because i still have time left on my previous which was applied while i had an AP buff, and now the AP buff is gone. So I am spamming the rupture key yet all i get is the fun "A more powerful spell is already active" message. So while i wait i continue to regen energy, SnD gets closer to running out, and my 1s/5r cycle can get completely thrown off. Depending on how lucky i get with relentless and combat potency the time can be several seconds. Is it best to just wait the entire duration of rupture, which can lead to a loss of snd and a loss of energy and continue with the 5 pt rupture. Or is it best to just throw up a 5pt snd and start building combo points for a 5pt rupture and let rupture fall off and not snd. Or perhaps a 5pt evis, and then start over.

Edit: Damnit, Aldriana beat me to the punch and was more concise about it.

Yep. Noted for future threads to, srry for the sword v dag stuff

The problem with Rupture (and the whole "overwrite" situation) is that there are so many variable buffs that even were it very advantageous to optimally time your Ruptures it is basically impossible to do so. For example there are many buffs which you can't control, but end up going off, such as Mongoose, UR, TT, Hourglass, Ferocious Inspiration, Grace of Air Totem (for a totem-twisting shaman); there are ones you can (Bloodlust Brooch, etc.).

You're never going to get the "optimal" buffs up just because there are so many, for example, at one point you may have Double Mongoose, and think that is a good point to Rupture, but the next time you have 5 Combo Points, you now have UR + Mongoose + TT.

So instead, if you can, just build to five combo points and drop the Rupture, if you can't, I tend to SS an extra time or two (even with 5 CPs) and then Rupture when I can, then use SnD as I would normally. This results in little to no lost SnD uptime. Also, once you lose the 2pc-NB bonus this problem basically never occurs, because you're spending a lot more of your Rupture time building for the succeeding SnD.

Excellent, these I can agree with

I think for the sake of compactness, you do not really need to include all the additive buffs. Maybe just include specifications on the buffs that affect a total unit by a % such as kings, sinister calling, presence of Relentless Earthstorm Diamond, etc.

And really, we should be thanking you! Taking the time and putting in the effort to write this compendium of useful information is really very neat. I don't think words can describe just how thankful many rogues will be to have this useful information compiled into a single post for quick reference. So, with that, I offer you a hearty "Thank you!"

So here is a quick question I'm not sure if its been asked yet but......is the amount of hit rating a rogue will loose going from Kara to ZA gear worth while? or should one stick with the Karazhan Gear and focus on the weapon drops in ZA and only worry about getting the boots from Badge turn in. Or is the Haste and Ignore Armor a larger DPS upgrade for us over the Huge Hit rating we would looses

I bet the first post answers these questions. I just betcha. Don't ask how I know.

Sorry if I'm repeating old news, but I've been going through threads to find out where maces fall in dps now since the 2.3 changes on the PTR with weapon skill to expertise now and maces gaining a 5% damage increase on critcal strikes. I saw on the first page reading the roguecraft post that for a maces spec you didn't need weapon expertise since that only affected swords, daggers and fist. Now it's changed and was wondering is that now needed for maces? I know maces is a little bit more pve viable but where can I find some more info on combat maces?

Looking at the new changes with mace spec receiving 5% crit damage and sword procs effecting mainhand it would nearly be possible to make a mace/sword spec that is a viable spec for pve and pvp, with minimal loss of talents from either side. I'm looking forward to it.

Responses to both of these things are in the first post, in the "Preliminary 2.3 Information" section.

wasn't after a response was making a statement :P

Has anyone actually tested 2.3 at all to find out (a) if the dual-wield miss penalty has seen any changes or (b) if the massive increase in misses is reducing dps meaningfully?

Done. Download here.

All logs are with 1540 AP, no procs altering attack power. They should be pretty clearly labelled as to what effects were in play with each log. I was wielding a [Blackout Truncheon] with a boquet of flowers in the off-hand.

If there's any questions or you need more data, let me know

Can someone point me to the math or testing which demonstrates how much armor penetration increases DPS? I see above where 0.27 ArP = 1 AP for sword rogues, but the only source I can find is, "that's what the spreadsheet says."

The math is in the spreadsheet. Moreover, it varies with your gear and spec. 0.27 ArP = 1 AP is an example value for a particular configuration of gear and talents.

Just curious, because damage mitigation through armor works on a non-linear scale, in your equations where 1 armor pen = 0.27 ap, does this change with the more armor penetration you get? are there any charts out there that show how the mitigation works from 1 armor - 32k armor?

The .27 number is drawn from what a boss typically has in a raid situation. As you get more armor penetration, it becomes more powerful - and, conversely, if you have less armor penetration, it's worth less. That said, in the ranges that we usually operate (where it's hard to have more than 500 or so passive armor penetration from gear) the value doesn't fluxuate too dramatically, so as a first approximation I think the .27 number is fine. Those that want a more detailed answer, customized to their current gear and talents, can use the spreadsheet to obtain it.

How is 88 agility for 5 people a waste of time and mana? Obviously, there is a gain there, the trade-offs should be considered instead of dismissing it.

First of all: time. Not including buff totems every 2 minutes, all Shaman do while DPSing is to click Stormstrike every 10 seconds and a shock every 6 seconds. We have plently of free GCDs. Since instants don't interrupt auto-attacking, we can drop totems during our free GCDs to boost DPS.

Secondly: mana. This will be dependant on your Shaman's gear, but I manage a WF rank 2 rotation with a max rank GoA fine. If your Shaman doesn't have the gear/consumable usage to do this, he should work out whether 88 agility is more overall raidDPS than his shock rotation and prioritise whichever is higher when he's mana constrained (it is most likely totem twisting).

One thing to clarify though: GoA can't be up for 100% of the time due to the GCD. The best you can hope for without losing WF Totem is 81%.

Well, there are a few problems with simply relying on messing with the spreadsheet and seeing what it say for the value of armor penetration.

1. Sometimes spreadsheets have mistakes and so independant verification is valuable.

2. By understanding the formulas, I can, for example, figure out which stats and talents are synergistic and so make better choices.

3. When I tell the other rogues, "Well, the spreadsheet says..." I get cut off by someone saying "you and your *** spreadsheets."

To a zero order approximation, AP and ArP do the same thing - increase the damage done by each hit. Why do they both need to exist? There must be a crossover point where itemizing ArP becomes more effective, or some types of target where ArP is more effective.

Long story short, the calculations are far too complex to simply "verify independently," unless you wish to construct your own spreadsheet. The spreadsheet calculations incorporate all of your procs and talents as well as your combo point cycle to arrive at a conclusion. I can't imagine actually going through the tedium to repeat such calculations by hand. Might there be mistakes in the spreadsheet? Possibly. Are they blatant enough to be easily shown using calculations done by hand? No.

Is anybody gonna do anything with the Mace Spec / RED / Lethality combat logs I posted here? I'd do the math myself but I'm not sure I'm capable of it...

Sorry, I downloaded your log the other day, I haven't had a chance to go through it yet. Thanks for reminding me, though.

I've been looking over and doing some tests in-game and I've realised that your guide contains an error; apparently 1 agility = 1 attack power, instead of two. If I am wrong, and this is an upcoming change in a later patch then sorry, was just trying to point it out.

Can anyone shed any light on the matter?

From the first post: These guidelines work by comparing the amount of DPS provided by any one stat to the amount of DPS provided by a point of Attack Power

Aha... Sorry about that - complete brainfart. Can a mod remove my post / whatever?

By the way, that is one of the reasons that the abbreviation should be switched from "AP" to "AEP" or "AtkEP".

Personally I tend to use EAP (Effective Attack Power) rather than AtkEP, because it's shorter. Although I suppose there is more possibility of confusion when talking about both EAP and AEP.

Yeah, I suppose I'm not being hardcore about what it ends up being, as long as it's not "AP", and I suppose I'd kinda prefer not "AEP" since that can be confused with Agility Equivalency. EAP is fine. APEP would kinda work too, and is reasonably distinct.

Overhauled the Gear Selection section, also added a tidbit to the patch 2.3 info about valuing expertise rating. Check it over and let me know if it's okay now (I'm still a bit uncertain about two-digit decimal precision and having so many different values, but I'd rather be accused of being too comprehensive than inaccurate).

You should qualify the 3.5% loss to hit as being "vs. bosses" in the Expertise section. The loss is minimal vs. trash.

Also, the "Hit Cap" section is not reflecting the changes in 2.3 (though that may be intentional UNTIL 2.3) with regards to WEx.

It is intentional. I'll update the other sections when 2.3 is imminent (i.e. a week away) or live.

As for geming for a Mutilate build, my hunch is (and the current Rogue DPS spreadsheet agrees for T4 level gearing) that +agi has a greater benefit than +hit. Thus, all red sockets should be +8 agi and all yellow sockets should be +4agi/+4hit.

Unbuffed, when I ran the DPS spreadsheet's agility equivalence points calculator I got 1agi=0.74hit=0.56ap for a Mutilate build. Buffed (Kings and Windfury being the key buffs), the equivalence was 1agi=0.88hit=0.51ap. Since so much of a Mutilate build's damage comes from specials and finishers, the combo point generation scaling of crits from +agi yield a better DPS boost than the white damage scaling from +hit.

(Interestingly, without Windfury +crit is worth almost as much as +hit in the spreadsheet, which shows the importance of crits in a Mutilate build. Also interesting was that going from Windfury to Instant Poison was only a ~10 buffed DPS loss for my gear level, which surprised me.)

This was my experience early Kara when I was still running a Mutilate build. Getting in 2 4-5CP finishers between slice and dices is just awesome.

Hello,

I've been playing a rogue for a while now - never had much time to play, and now I have a bit too much time which lead me to these forums. I've learned a lot about the rogue class, and I want to thank you folks for all your hard work and valuable information. There are a few things that aren't as clear to me as I'd like however and I hope that as I read, the mud will clear from the water.

I would like you to take a look at my current rogue on the armory, and give me a critique on how I could improve my raid damage. I currently am what I thought a rather pvp/pve hybrid, where I took out some points from sub (motd) and rearranged my other talents to be a productive combat build in a raid scenario. However, I feel that I'm lacking maxing out my rogues' potential quite a bit.

If you take a gander at the build; the gear I have is the "best" gear I own. There's not much I change when I pve/pvp except for a resilience/+dodge helm.

I have yet to look at my gems and their EAP worth, (which I just learned today from this post) but could you give me a critique on my rogue, and let me know what/how you think I could improve. (short of going to a pve combat swords build; since I dont have any swords or daggers that are higher than 71 dps blues)

Goatpoker, hakkar server
The World of Warcraft Armory

Thanks for the advice in advance

Just so you know, these types of posts are frowned upon - the whole reason we have topics like these with summaries at the top is so you can do the general work yourself - if you have specific questions, you'll usually get an answer by "Here's my armory, tell me what I can do better" is best left for the WWS thread.

So as not to just be a crybaby about forum rules, to answer your questions, your best bet is to look into the two spreadsheets linked in the first post of this thread - for your gear level, and to figure out how things work with your particular talent build, I'd highly recommend the DPS spreadsheet. If you end up in a more conventional combat build and with a tad higher gear level, I personally prefer the gear sheet (though that is a personal opinion). Both sheets have a lot of value, and will get you within very acceptable margins of error for the answers you're looking for.

Alright, I figured as much.

I'll have to take a more indepth look at the spreadsheets - I had downloaded them and browsed through them trying to understand... but the problem I encountered was that I could not pick gear (such as maces) that I had, and therefore I could not use the sheet as I initially thought I could.

It seems that as well created the sheet is; it's based on very high end gear specific to conventional "best" raid types - such as combat swords.

I'll be posting the thread above in the wow forums to see what type of reaction I might get since I'm not up to par yet on the elitist level.

First off, very good post you have put together been a good read with alot of great information.

Now my question !

With the change to mace spec in 2.3 would a Mace/Sword spec abit like the Fist/Sword one work?

I understand the crit bonus is different on mace to fist but with weapons like BS mace *haste* would this be something worth testing/trying?

Sorry if this has been posted before or has not been posted because it does not work.

Thanks

Tomb

I noticed something interesting today while leveling my unarmed skill in Blasted Lands against the invincible mob. All my strikes always hit for 139 or 140, but my critical strikes hit for 285 or 286 (about 204% damage). I do not have the 12 agil/+3% crit damage meta gem (I have the +3 damage/chance to stun one [which is underwhelming, by the way], and I took my helm off in case that was messing with something). I was just auto attacking with my bare fists, so nothing like Lethality could explain it. In fact, the only explanation I have is that Murder doesn't just give +2% damage, but acts like the Hunter Slaying Talents, and gives +2% damage and increases critical damage by an additional 2%.

Anybody else have any explanation, information or insight on this talent/situation?

This was dicussed in the Relentless Earthstorm Diamond thread; the conclusion was that, yes, Murder double-passes on critical strikes.

From the second page:

http://elitistjerks.com/509683-post30.html
http://elitistjerks.com/513443-post44.html

It was covered a few more times in later pages, these were merely the first two I found.

Hemorrhage: This ability now does 125% of weapon damage. (source)

I'm aware of it and plan to have some DPS comparisons for the new Hemo available tomorrow at some point. A rough guess on inspection suggests that an 11/28/22 Hemo/swords build or 11/21/29 Hemo/Deadliness may well equal or surpass combat swords in base DPS, before factoring in the contribution of the Hemo debuff. However, this is just a guess and should not be taken as gospel.

I was looking over this thread, and the gem selection portion of the post had me confused. I was under the impression that +AP gems were more beneficial than +agi gems (im combat daggers).

The newest Rogue dps spreadsheet keeps telling me that AP gems are higher dps, what am i missing? I dont mind re-gemming, but i want to get a more clear understanding before I do.

This thread depends on the equivalency calculations that Vulajin has in the first post. The end result is along the lines of : Raid buffs make pure agi gems better then pure ap (with the exception of 1 20 ap gem from pvp) until you get access to t6 gems (10 agi is basically always worth more then 20 ap). That will probably be all moot anyway when the patch hits and the hit cap rockets up another 60 points.

http://elitistjerks.com/536225-post549.html

I ran the numbers in the above post and, as I thought, 11/28/22 is more than competitive with combat swords, even before factoring in the Hemo debuff. As such, it may be beneficial for several rogues in any given raid to be Hemo, even if all the charges don't get eaten up every time.

I'll wait a couple days to see if anything more changes before I put this information in the first post.

Now, in the interest of balance, what buff to Hemo (along these same lines) brings it up to par with Combat Swords, but doesn't trounce it out of the water? I think it's somewhat ... silly that a buff to Sub makes it FoTM (though it's been known to happen - see arcane mages in 2.2) and something like this single change that totally affects the class and makes one build vastly superior (+5% dps BEFORE the debuff? yes please) is likely to get nerfed in the future. It may be interesting (and hell, if Blizzard reads these boards, it might even be USEFUL) to extrapolate a weapon damage % buff to Hemo that would bring it completely in line with combat swords without making it so that all your rogues should be sub. (I'd advocate a similar setup for assassination/mut builds, but Bliz seems to be happy with assassination atm).

What would those numbers look like with a 110% weapon damage modifier on Hemo? 115%?

And before everyone jumps me as a hemo hater, I'd really like it to be very viable for one rogue to go hemo and have it be an overall raid dps increase, but the marginal benefits of more than one rogue being so to be less (though still within ~5% of all other competitive builds). If it isn't, and regardless of the debuff 11/28/22 is still king, then we just have the same problem we have today (Combat being the only way to be), except it's in a different tree.

I have probably been unclear in my post, but all the theoretical DPS numbers given for the builds did include the Hemo debuff estimate. At that gear level, Hemo/swords (11/28/22) comes out roughly equivalent to 19/41+1 before the debuff.

Not trying to disregard your work Vulajin, but what kind of spreadsheet are you using for your calculations?

I know spreadsheets can only be so far precise, but comparing a 11/28/22 build to a standard 20/41 combat build with the newest DPS Spreadsheed (already updated with 125% normalized hemo), I see combat leading with a good 30 DPS. If I uncheck the home debuff (but leave it checked for the hemo build), combat is falling behind by only 3 DPS.

This is why I'd like to ask, are you confident that your spreadsheet can take it up with the DPS spreadsheet, with all its considerations and side effects, procs, etc. (but also possible flaws)?

*edit* found the answer to my question in the Hemo thread

I'm pretty confident in the accuracy of my spreadsheet. Note that I exclude the effect the Hemo debuff has on the rogue's personal DPS, because I'm already calculating the total DPS provided by the debuff as part of the rogue's DPS. Regardless of whether the rogue or someone else is consuming the debuff, as long as it gets fully consumed, the total DPS yielded will be a certain amount.

If you'd like to take a look at my sheet and confirm its accuracy, send me a PM and I'll be happy to e-mail it to you. I would already have released it publicly, but I don't consider it fit for public consumption yet (the UI is still not fully functional). When it does reach that point, especially since the DPS spreadsheet doesn't currently have an author, I'll probably release mine.

Ah I see. The numbers make more sense then.


Again, not trying to disregard or disrespect you and your work, but do we really need a third spreadsheet for the rogue class? Seeing how much the DPS spreadsheet has evolved and what features it offers (gear upgrades, cycle recommendations, AEP calculations, gem upgrades, etc), does your spreadsheet bring something new to the table? Did you manage to circumvent any of the stumbling blocks, errors, mistakes (seal fate comes to mind)?

Honestly speaking, wouldn't it be better if you focused your energy on maintaining the existing DPS spreadsheet (which is now without an author as you have noticed), instead of trying to re-invent the wheel (a third time)?

Again, I appreciate every work and theorycraft for the rogue class, especially such a complicated task as writing a spreadsheet, I am just wondering if this is the right approach.

Well, the story of why I wrote my spreadsheet is a bit off-topic, but since you asked, I'll answer. This should clear up any confusion about my intentions.

Initially my issue was with the accuracy of CP cycle models in other sheets. It's not that the other sheets don't have good models, but that they couldn't answer the particular questions I had. Specifically, what is the effect of the overall cycle DPS of the chance that procs don't occur? In a typical Xs/5r cycle, there is a chance the Slice doesn't proc Relentless Strikes, and a chance either finisher doesn't proc Ruthlessness. I wanted to have a more exact value for Slice uptime, factoring these things in. Both other spreadsheets, I believe, would calculate Slice uptime at ~100% for 2s/5r with T4 2pc. This is accurate in a sense, but if Slice ever drops (in the situation of no-procs, for example), then your average Slice uptime cannot possibly be 100%.

My second issue had to do with the lack of freedom in cycle selection in the other sheets. I really wanted to be able to enter literally any cycle in my sheet, and compare it accurately against other cycles. For this, I needed more than just Slice uptime and Rupture uptime; I needed to know exact values for white DPS (to figure out the DPS contribution of Slice) and for special attacks (both Sinister Strike/Backstab and finishers). So I implemented calculations for these things.

Another thing I needed to know was my energy contribution from Combat Potency. This was a function of several haste effects, such as Mongoose, which is a 2% haste proc with no internal cooldown. Haste procs with no internal cooldowns, under the old way of thinking (in which haste increased PPM effects), have circular effects. Thus, I needed to create a special model for these things; so I did. I went ahead and added models for DST, TSD, Dragonstrike, and others. I made all these calculations intentionally circular along with my cycle calculations, to ensure that any self-increasing effects (like haste procs w/o internal cooldowns) were modeled appropriately.

At this point I realized that I had large portions of the work for an honest-to-goodness DPS spreadsheet done. As a result, whenever a new question arose for which I needed a suitable answer, I would implement it in my own sheet and use that to provide the answer. Some examples of the questions I addressed are: raid Hemo builds, Shiv spam builds, how RED compared to TSD (when patch 2.2 was looming), and how Eviscerate cycles would compare to Rupture with 3/3 Imp Evis, 3/3 Aggression, and T5 2pc. Eventually I also decided that I liked my sheet enough to use seriously (i.e. to consult for gear and buff choices). So I took an hour here and there and added a full gear/buff selection sheet (the gear mostly has yet to be populated, though).

At this point after several months of using it to answer questions I felt couldn't be answered adequately to the degree of exactness I desired by the other sheets, it has approached the point of being roughly a duplicate of the same. Still, it has served me quite well -- most of the conclusions in the first post of this thread were made using my spreadsheet, and I'm pretty confident in their correctness.

If you ask whether I feel I've wasted my time, my answer would be no. Although the questions I initially asked when writing this spreadsheet have been answered or, in some cases, rendered obsolete (read: haste doesn't increase BC PPM effects), they were still important questions to ask at one time, and therefore the sheet has meaning. And for the record, I do still use it for all of my personal DPS questions.

Anyway. Sorry for the horribly off-topic rant. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to discuss it further.

(This seemed like the most appropriate thread for this comment; if not, I apologize.)

It seems as though as of patch 2.3, there will be a "build progression" that corresponds to the natural gear progression that exists in the raiding environment. Specifically:

Up to entry level t5 content, mutilate seems to be an accessible, effective build. There are 3 kara daggers available, and a mix of kara gear, badge gear, and heroic purples can easily give you the stats needed to support mutilate.

As long as you have the 4pc t4 bonus, you can experiment with deep sub builds that include active aggro reduction (shadow step) and death avoidance (cheat death).

Once you move beyond the t4 set bonus, you can transition to pure combat builds to maximize your dps output. Initially, that will probably be combat swords, eventually, that could switch to combat maces.

Basically, the best build is highly dependant on the gear available to you and the content you are facing, and there seems to be a smooth, planned transition layed out as you move through content.

With the changes coming in 2.3 to weapon skill i have been wondering lately how effective expertise would actually be. Most spreadsheets that i see show it to be on par with hit rating. However from my point of view as a rogue, most of the time we should be attacking mobs from behind to avoid the parry causing a tank to be killed. And if your not able to be parried or dodged from the mob then doesnt that effectivly make expertise at best situationally dependant and worthless in all but a few cases.

Has anyone done any research as to whether Mace/Sword in 2.3 will be as viable as Fist/Sword is today?

It just seems that it might be a reasonable pve/pvp hybrid if it works out.

Weapon skill will reduce your target's dodge and parry at the same rate hit rating increases your hit (more or less). 16 weapon skill = -1% dodge and -1% parry for the mob. They can't parry from behind, but they can dodge. This has the added bonus of insuring that your yellow damage isn't dodged, which makes it slightly better than +1% hit.

The fact that it also reduces %parry for the mob is just gravy for when you aren't behind them for some reason.

Mobs can dodge from behind. (Maybe this should be explicitly stated in the first post?)

Answers to both of these questions are in the first post under "Preliminary 2.3 Information."

I don't believe that Blizzard had such foresight when they planned BC itemization for rogues, nor do I believe your assessment of the viability of builds is accurate. Notably, deep sub builds will always be terrible for DPS, no matter what gear level. Combat swords is always a top flight DPS option, regardless of gear level.

I'd rather not clutter up the first post with a ton of stuff that's general to all classes. There is a combat mechanics thread somewhere on the boards...I'll try to dig it up.

Is it safe to assume we should apply the EP system to leg armor selection as well?

I assume Nethercobra Leg Armor > Cobrahide Leg Armor > Nethercleft Leg Armor > Clefthide Leg Armor based on the following (fist/sword buffed numbers used). Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Nethercobra Leg Armor
+50 AP
+12 Crit Strike Rating

50 EP + 20.52 EP (12 * 1.71) = 70.52 EP

Cobrahide Leg Armor
+40 AP
+10 Crit Strike Rating

40 EP + 17.1 EP (10 * 1.71) = 57.1 EP

Nethercleft Leg Armor
+40 Stamina
+12 Agility

0 EP + 26.16 EP (12 * 2.18) = 26.16 EP

Clefthide Leg Armor
+30 Stamina
+10 Agility

0 EP + 21.8 EP (10 * 2.18) = 21.8 EP

Not sure if Leg Armor warrants its own section in the post, but a sentence under "self-buffs" much like the drums explanation may be useful.

Is it really necessary to spell out every little detail such as EP for leg armour where it is obvious which is the optimum choice?

There is pretty much one set of enchants which are optimal for rogues (with a couple of exceptions) in PvE. The CE head enchant, the Aldor shoulder enchant (very small difference in EP between this and the Scryer enchant as detailed in the OP), +6 stats to chest, +12 agi to cloak, +24 AP to bracer, +15 agi to gloves, Nethercobra armour for legs and Cat's Swiftness to boots. There is benefit on sustained fights to choosing +12 agi to boots over run speed increase but the others really should be a no-brainer.

It is understandable that gems may need more explanation due to the fact there are 3 types of gem which change in relative power as gear progresses but this is not the case for leg enchants where 10 seconds thought on the topic makes clear that the Nethercobra is the best by far.

EP is supposed to be used to weight similar power items for optimum choice, there is no question which of the four leg armours is the most powerful so including a section on EP detailing the obvious seems like a waste of time.

That said, it might be a good idea to say "These are the optimum enchants:" as you stated above with a brief blurb about the couple that are arguable. I think every rogue had to at one point look up all the enchants and find the good ones. Seems a perfect section to Roguecraft 101. That said, I agree that its unnecessary to mention the poor options just as its unnecessary to mention which are the best green gems.

There is already a section differentiating between enchants for any slots with two seriously competing choices. Though [Nethercleft Leg Armor] is very nice, no DPS-minded rogue should really have any trouble deciding whether those or [Nethercobra Leg Armor] are superior DPS.

So with the changes to expertise, It has come to my understanding that Belt of One-Hundred Deaths will become the best in the game. It happened to drop today and no rogue really wanted it so I was awarded it. My question is, pre-patch is [Belt of One-Hundred Deaths] currently better than [Belt of Deep Shadow]. I know it doesn't matter since 2.3 will change things, but thats not for another couple weeks and I want to maximize my dps for the time being.

Yes the one-hundred deaths is better.

Go for the one hundred deaths, even pre-2.3 it is better and your rogues needs to l2read

A Note on the Expertise stuff in regards to -parry.. Nearly every boss out there has some sort of "Cast on a random raid member" ability. Considering the raid is by-and-large behind the boss, the boss will spin around and cast it on the player. During this brief time you WILL be able to parry. Rage and his Ice thing, Anetheron and Infernals + Carrion, Archimonde and Grip + Burst, Teron is always spinning around, etc. While not a huge difference, or even a big effect on your dps.. its probably worth noting. I wouldn't change the value of expertise to be any higher than it is now (10% better than hit).. but its something to remember in the back of your mind I'd think.. for those who like to nit-pick every detail at least :P

I've been following this thread and I hope that this hasn't been mentioned yet, but has anyone considered the human racial in respect to either mace/mace or mace/sword? As I understand it, it's going to add 1% crit chance to hits with maces. Would that make it more valuable? To have that 1% crit in addition to the OH sword procs and the MH crit damage with maces increase?

In terms of nitpicking, certain casts also prevent the mobs from dodging and parrying.

The human racials also add 1% crit to swords, so the relative difference is probably not going to change much.

Granted, but I know I see Parry ever now and then on bosses when they spin around... the no dodge/parry while casting, yet I see parries puzzles me..

Its not like I'm standing in front of the boss, I get like 0.2% parry or something on WWS for those bosses and all the melee are similar *shrug*

I think only casted and channeled spells prevent parry? Some bosses have instant abilities (Teron Incinerate, Shadowbolts also I think?), in which they turn and at that short time it's possible to get a parry or two?

Aye, but I was referring to the difference between maces/swords and fists/swords. Seeing as maces gets 1% chance to crit as well as 5% increased crit damage, whereas fists only get 5% increased chance to crit.

Hi i was checking out the post real nice ^^ learn something new each day .

But i was wondering what is your thought on armor penetration stuff.

There's a point for point comparison of Armor Penetration to other stats in the first post.

I was looking for something a little more in depth than:
"The effects of these two changes bring maces and daggers roughly up to the level of fists for DPS (that is, about 2-3% behind swords; however, note that daggers will still lag further behind on fights where Murder is effective). In addition, mace/sword builds increase in DPS, such that the top DPS builds will likely be sword/sword ~ fist/sword > mace/sword."

I had in fact read "Preliminary 2.3 Information".

Perhaps you should ask some more specific questions then. What does "as viable" mean? If you're asking specifically about the change to Mace Specialization which gives +5% damage to crits, the answer is that Fist with inherent crit, not a lethality type bonus, is still higher DPS. What does "reasonable hybrid" mean? I think you'll find that most posters and information here are dedicated to min/maxing, or at least the theorycraft behind min/maxing. A hybrid PVE/PVP build is pretty subjective.

Ake, you ask if it will be "as viable" as fist/sword, and then you quote the answer. In the context of PvE raiding, no, it does not look to be as viable. Where's the confusion, here?

[e] Fold beat me here by a good deal. Woops.

would haste and hit have the same affect...

Here's some that may or may not be accurate...

mob hp = 10000, mob dodge = 5%, dmg per hit = 100, atk speed = 1.0 (weird stats for the sake of simplicity)

no +hit/haste- ((10000[hp]/100[dmg])*1.05[dodge]) = 105[hits to mob death]

+ 1% hit- ((10000/100)*(1.05-.01[hit]) = 104

+1% haste- ((10000/100)*1.05)*(1.0/1.01[haste]) = 104 (rounded, did I do something wrong here?)